Hadopelagia
by R.C. McLachlan
Summary: A forgotten sea gives birth to a continuation at the tattered edge of all things, in a house built by a good man's great-grandfather on a record-breaking hot day centuries ago. (Kakashi/Iruka; season 2 divergent, ensemble cast)
1. A Continuation

**"The cure for anything is saltwater—sweat, tears, or the sea." – Isak Dinesen, author  
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><p>She gives birth at the raggedy end of all things, in the little beach house a good man's great-grandfather built on a record-breaking hot day over a century ago.<p>

Hours pass as she fights through a new kind of pain—and she had such plans for the afterward, the period where she happily dealt with nighttime feedings and diaper changes, and all the while she would spend hours with the shards of this memory—when the far wall of the room bursts in, a storm of white plaster and old wood. It is a reminder that her dreams are just that, and reality never knocks before it intrudes.

The baby in her arms screams at the noise, and that his first living minutes are terrifying is both beautiful and tragic. Sighing, she tucks his small, soft head to her breast, swollen with milk, and whispers words not meant for his ears. The baby calms somewhat, whimpering and clutching at her skin, and outside the window comes the roar of the waves.

Sighing, and with great care, she eases up to sit at the edge of the bed, feet slowly sliding to rest firmly upon the floor like a foregone conclusion, and the pain that arcs through her abdomen is incredible and utterly wretched and wonderfully new. Her hold tightens on the baby, who murmurs at the feel of it, and it is as if her body is not her own. Which, of course, is absurd. Her body is no one's but hers—the skin she wears was not something she had taken in the night like others do; there were no pretty words or promises to men who had made their homes in bars, or to women that needed a change in their life, or hymns to those in temples and towers to prove her authenticity. There were no offerings made in her name, and no pretty cloak of hers was stolen and hidden to tether her here. She had carefully built herself from the ground up—sand and shell and seawater and bone—into a dream made real. She has more than earned the sartorial ideal she wears. Every complaint issued by a nerve ending, every irritated trigger point, every muscle twinge brings a flash of a grateful smile to her face, and she presses her nose against the algae-soft hair of her favorite creation, wet with amnion and smelling sharply of rot and oxidization and salt, and oh, it's lovely. Her boy smells like the sea.

Slowly, shifting the child to rest his cheek against the safe haven between her neck and shoulder, she shuffles toward the window, dancing slowly around the detritus.

Beyond the place where the wall used to be is a long, haunting melody, a drawn-out note that hangs heavy in the air. After a moment, it is joined by two others, great and gentle singers with the grace of waves imbued into their spines, and she hums with them, _One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three_, until they become one. Her feet, solid, sturdy things, keep time, a pursuit waltz that she whispers into soft, dark hair, "_One-two-three, one-two-three, do-re-mi, on-the-sea_," until they are able to dance around the room.

She hears the faint susurrus of movement behind her, and the baby stirs against her at the sound.

"This is the last of the good houses," she says, and continues to dance. "A good man's father's father's father built it with his own hands, you know, right from the salt and sand. He took the rocks and the shells and the love that had been given to him by his family and made a house in which he could invoke my name and I would answer. They don't make houses like this anymore."

Her feet slow and the song ends as the whales drift away for parts unknown. She can't see her reflection in the broken glass that hangs onto what is left of the wall, but she sees the child's, and it is if he is curled around the entirety of the sea.

She smiles. "I've always wanted to die in a house like this." A pause, and then, "You're late."

There comes the sound of a thousand storms rocking the sky, and then, **YOU COULD NOT HAVE KNOWN WHEN TO EXPECT ME**.

"No," she agrees. "But you're later than I imagined you would be."

**THE CHILD.**

"Is wonderful." It comes out as a blissful breath, and she can't help but look away from the billions of grains of sand that lay just beyond the house to the parcel in her arms. Beautiful, beautiful thing, a world within a world within a world.

After a moment, two moments, and how does anyone ever get anything done when there are amazing things like her son that need to be looked at, she turns around.

It's not killing intent that hits her, but it feels like it, like looking into a mirror except the reflection cannot be borne, and the air in her lungs punches out of her to see it with her human eyes. The void beyond the edge of the earth fills with blue-green-gray-black, with storms and dark things that lurk in the depths, and she plunges into it headfirst, into the cold that presses against her skin, because it knows her, because it loves her in a way no one has in years and years and years.

Her boy lets out a soft whimper, enough to reel her back in, and she inhales the air gratefully before turning to face it fully.

It has taken form now, resplendent in armor that no longer has any place in this world. It's been a long time since she's worn it, but she knows the gleam of it as it catches the light. It stands before her as a man she has never met, his crown brushing against the ceiling and disturbing the old wood, and he's so very thin, practically skeletal. It takes so much to contain them within flesh and carbon; his skin has caved in, gaunt and stretched tight over bone, and soon the body he's borrowed will be unable to sustain him. Her attempts to catch his gaze are thwarted by the gossamer that shields his eyes, but the many, many eyes in his skin are all open and fixed on her boy.

They're always fixed on the children, for children are mysteries the way dark matter is a mystery—utterly known and everywhere, and yet none know quite what to do with it. Children are bright, brilliant things with laughter like the first wave that touched the shore and a capacity for such great things, and while the old ones do not understand a thing about them, they protect them all the same. She used to sit in parks, in villages, on beaches and in playgrounds, and watch them run, spin, jump, sing, hop, and feel a distant sort of affection. They were, after all, the best creation; little masterpieces in sweaters and small shoes.

But now, wrapped in skin that is her own, she sees them and wonders at ever thinking them perfect. They're not. They're loud, sticky creatures, and they stumble and scream and are slow, and she loves them so. They aren't masterpieces, but beginnings, and all beginnings are small and completely overwhelming. And one night, nine months ago, she left a small lagoon, having spent hours watching little hands plunge into tide pools with envy for jellyfish and sand stars while proud parents watched on, went home to her apartment, her _wonderful, imperfect_ apartment—made so because it was all hers—and whispered, "I want one. I want a beginning of my own, but more than that I want a continuation."

Her continuation huffs against her throat and lets out a low whine. A few feet away, the thin fingers on a too-long hand twitch in response, but otherwise do not move. He stands as if rooted to the ground, part of the house built by a good man's great-grandfather, and she remembers what they both used to be.

"You visited me so many times the first few weeks," she says. "I couldn't sleep for the noise—music, people talking, breathing, and you would sit with me until the sun came over the horizon and I could hear myself again. And every time you asked me why I stayed. Do you remember what I said?"

**THAT TO BE IMPERFECT WAS THE ONLY WAY TO ONCE AGAIN COURT THE ATTENTION OF THOSE WHO HAVE FORGOTTEN US.**

"I was wrong. The time of the old gods is over."

Her name is Nanami, but it wasn't always, and she was thirty-one years old the day of her birth. She has not attended school a day in her life, she does not have a favorite food because she loves them all, and she is quite enamored with a house built in centuries ago by a man whose name Time has long-since forgotten—barely a blip to her. She is not married, has never known the touch of another, and she has a son.

But once, she was grand, with many shining scales and sway over every ocean.

"He will be cared for by a nin couple who has been unable to conceive—far from here, in a village that smells of leaves and smoke. They have agreed to take my name so that he may keep his."

**AND YOUR TEMPLE? YOUR FOLLOWERS?**

Ah, her temple—a humble construct of shell and stone, dutifully tended to by young and old hands, the stories of her grandeur and power passed down through blood and breath. On the stormiest nights when the mothers and fathers of the small clan near the White Cove would wrap their little ones in blankets and furs, she would watch them from the shadows cast by the pillars they erected in homage to the strength that her very name invoked. She would even curl up with their young and keep them safe from the waves that crashed against the rocks and threatened their very livelihood. Unfailingly loyal, those men and women, bestowing each generation with names that she was proud of, taken from the very creatures she made real.

The children of the Umino clan will be formidable, for they will be her representatives on this mortal earth.

"To honor their loyalty, I have given them the sea with which to arm themselves. A storm is coming, my dear. There are those who would see us as their shields and swords in a fight for dominion—I will see the Umino children prepared for such a war. And someday," she nuzzles into baby-fine, dark hair, "he of my blood and heart will lead them."

**IF YOU HAVE POSITIONED YOUR CLAN TO INHERIT YOUR GIFTS, WHY RISK A CHILD AT ALL?**

It would be a lie to say the question hasn't plagued her from the moment she took a handful of seawater and pressed it into her womb. It stole many of her nights, forced a resolution from her eons before she was ever ready, until she woke the day an entire new life emerged from her. Her heart is steadfast in its answer, but her tongue falters slightly as she whispers, "I wanted to leave a real continuation of myself here after I was gone. Selfishness; I have no other excuse than I was human at the time."

She turns away from the window and finds the gossamer no longer hides his eyes. She stares into them, unafraid, and feels something shift within her. It takes her a long moment to recognize it as regret. "I only wish I could have seen them. Could have seen _him_. He will be great."

**OUR WORLDS WERE NOT MEANT TO MERGE.**

"No," she agrees, but can't help the smile that breaks over her face. "But in this case, I am happy to make an exception. I have birthed a miracle, and now I will return home."

**YOU COULD SEAL YOURSELF INTO HIM.**

Nanami reaches down and tickles her boy's belly, laughing a little as he squirms, and is tempted to carve her name into an arc around it. She could be with him always. But then she thinks of old friends—_Kaguya, Juubi, Koujin_—and knows what becomes of those who are locked away.

"I would not make him into a prison; no one deserves such a fate, least of all him."

**HAVE YOU ISSUED THE CHILD A NAME?**

"Names have little power these days," Nanami says absently, then regards her boy for a long moment. His perfect lashes part and he gazes up at her with eyes the color of calm waters. _Hide them, and only bring them out when you need to see beyond what you see._ Her fingers brush his lids, and when he looks at her again his eyes are like the night. "Do you remember the small beasts we spun into being, at the beginning? Mine were the first and perhaps the most perfect, as they carried the best of us—our intelligence, our speed, our joy. They would jump as if they were trying to touch Heaven, and how we would weep, for there was no stopping the progress that would come once we departed this world. … Iruka, I think. Umino Iruka, the clever child of many oceans. It is a good name, in a world that has no more use for such things."

Iruka murmurs at her, and she blinks back tears as she touches a finger to the soft swell of his right cheek and drags it slowly over the bridge of his nose to the left. The path over his skin dips suddenly, painlessly, sand bowing to the majesty of a wave, and sits as an innocuous scar. It will grow as he does, and he will bear her mark, now and forever; the last bit of herself she can possibly give.

"Never turn your back on the sea," she whispers, "and it will come when you call."

No matter how prepared she thought herself for the weight of him to become unfamiliar in her arms, a gull's cry of despair escapes her as Iruka dissolves into foam, washing from her to soak in the love of a stranger, a woman who is and is not his mother. Her head tips into her bare hands and she allows herself a moment to weep for the boy and man she will never know.

_Never turn your back on the sea, for it is my gift to you._

**IT IS TIME TO COME HOME, WATATSUMI. WE HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.**

Moments later, she is on the floor, slit from chin to cunt, and her hands shake as she tries to keep her intestines where they belong, but blood makes for a poor hold, and there is so very much of it. Part of her—the old part—laughs off such devastation and slips from the ruins of her body, erupting triumphantly into the spaces between the horizon, the perfect amalgam of water and wind and power and sound, and disappearing from this terrifying new world for good.

The other part, now empty of the god she clung to, bleeds out over a good man's great-grandfather's floor on the shore of a forgotten sea, and dies alone.

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><p><strong>Notes:<strong>

Someone mentioned Naruto on tumblr the other day, and I thought, "I've never seen it, despite it being super popular when I was in college. Let's watch the first episode and see if it lives up to the hype." By the time I hit episode 81 in, like, two days, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. As I type this, I'm on episode 216. This stupid show is ruining my life. I'm 27—it's too late for me to start getting into an anime I didn't watch on Toonami when I was young (you'll have to pry my nostalgic love for DBZ, Sailor Moon, and Gundam Wing from my cold, dead fingers).

Regardless, that dumb fox kid and his ilk seem to have inspired something in me, as the idea for this story has yet to let me go. I'm taking a lot of liberties with the canon, but bear with me. Here's hoping I even finish it.

Note: This is unbeta'd, because I know precisely emzero/em people in the Naruto fandom and I didn't feel like bothering my usual betas (who have no idea how to even pronounce 'Naruto,' let alone what it's about). Feel free to point out any mistakes—grammatical or otherwise. I'm sure this stupid thing is riddled with them.

This is also being posted to AO3.


	2. Jump

"I thought you were brave."

He once ran in the direction of a demon fox without any regard for his safety—even if his father hadn't whispered _you're so brave_ into his ear before throwing his own life upon a funeral pyre lit with nine, writhing flames, Iruka would have known it anyway.

"Don't you remember the time I set exploding paint tags in the Hokage's office?" Iruka demands, because it had been a thing of true beauty and was all anyone could talk about for weeks, and if they've forgotten about it he's going to be very angry. "I even framed Anko for it—and it_worked. _And she didn't kill me! I'm brave. Like, super brave. Braver than the lot of you put together, and probably the Hokage. What I'm _not_ is stupid."

"It's not _stupid_. It's a test."

"No, it really is stupid."

"Umino, stop being such a baby." It's one of the other boys who says it, someone from another class with droopy eyes and jowls. The two girls standing by snicker to each other, their eyes on him and their murmurings too quiet, too pointed, to be anything but nasty. Each unintelligible word aims to be the quick slice of a well-aimed kunai, but he's been crafting his armor for years. They don't even scratch it.

"Is that supposed to make me feel bad?" Iruka asks the boy, then tilts his head. "You look like a melted candle."

"Hey!"

Hachi snorts, stepping forward. "Umino, you _said_ you wanted to hang out with us."

Actually, this whole thing started when Tamaru-sensei crashed through the classroom door and into the hallway, screaming for a medi-nin about dying from septicemia thanks to a few well-hidden tacks placed on his chair, and Bunya Hachi—all skinny limbs and effortless charm—extended an invitation. _Pretty brave to do that where he couldn't see you, aren't you? Wanna test it after school?_

Iruka turns his head a little, enough to catch sight of the strong stitching on Hachi's jacket, the warm wool that lines the collar of the coat one of the girls wears. Probably gifts from their parents, rewards for doing well in school, or maybe just because those are the things parents get their kids for no other reason than it's cold.

Iruka hunches his shoulders a little. "I just don't get why I've got to do _this_."

"Well, the only way we'll know if a chakra-dead loser like you is cool enough to be part of our group is if you jump."

Iruka bristles. "I'm not chakra-dead!"

"Aren't you? Mizuki said you've never been able to do a jutsu."

"Mizuki said—?" But the words are lost on the wind that scrapes at his cheeks and pulls at his hair, uncomfortably dry and almost biting with its promise of snow. He's made it through enough winters in Konoha to know he won't last another if he doesn't do something about his stupid coat. He'll have to somehow scrounge up the money for a warmer one, or maybe if he does some odd jobs for old lady Kyoko she'll patch up the one he has—that is, if she's forgotten about that time with her cat and the wax.

"Where is Mizuki?"

And when did Mizuki start talking to Hachi about anything? Mizuki hates many things—miso ramen, fireworks, and history class—but nothing as much as Bunya Hachi. They've spent countless afternoons on the Academy roof, watching the clouds and pretending to see impossible weapons in them, things they'd use as Hokage someday, and somehow Mizuki would weave a new reason to hate Hachi into the conversation._I'd never be friends with him; everyone loves him and he doesn't deserve it. I hate him. If he says so much as "hello" to me, I'm going to punch him through a wall._

Iruka isn't sure when that changed.

He's knocked from his thoughts when someone pushes him hard from behind, and he feels the intent in it as he stumbles, catching himself just before he topples over the edge. Sand and rocks make the leap instead, disappearing from sight with a sound that is quieter than suicide ought to be.

His stomach pulls tight and for a moment the world seems to swim. Nausea crackles up his jaw, sour and sweet, and his mouth fills with saliva and a very pointed threat. He just barely chokes it down. There is no way he's going to puke in front of Bunya Hachi and everyone else; they'd never let him hear the end of it. Mizuki would carve it into the Memorial Stone next to his name—_Umino Iruka: The only fifteen-year old, chakra-dead genin to blow chunks over every single Hokage in one go_.

"Come on, Umino, don't wuss out." There's an ugliness to the words that sets Iruka's teeth on edge.

"I'm not wussing out, Hachi!" He snarls, and his heart pounds against his ribs with every intention of breaking them. It takes all his willpower not to punt Hachi's stupid ass off the dumb mountain instead. "But jeez, I could've gone right over!"

"That's the point, moron. You need to jump past the Third's chin; any ninja worth their salt could do it. We've all done it—right, you guys? It's how you become friends with us."

"Hachi-kun, maybe this isn't such a great idea," Melted Candle pipes up, cowering slightly when Hachi rounds on him. "What if he really _is_chakra-dead? He won't be able to get to the rocks if—"

"Shut up! Or do _you_ want to do it instead?"

The sheer novelty of being acknowledged by someone as popular as Bunya Hachi had made his tongue quick to act when he agreed to meet Hachi at the Monument. Finally, someone saw something worthwhile in him, something more than clever pranks and loud, raucous laughter. Hachi saw the way Iruka never seemed to need to study for his genjutsu classes; the appreciation he had for history; the foundation of his sharp, strategic mind upon which his penchant for tricks stood proud. He was Umino Iruka, more than the sum of his failures and abandonment issues, and he was finally _seen _by someone that mattered.

He should've known.

"You'll be fine, Umino. If you need help, one of us will totally come after you." Hachi's snarl melts into a smile, too-wide and full of teeth, and Iruka swallows hard.

_Liars. Charlatans. They are not your friends. They want to see you fail._

The thought rises up, unbidden, and he sends it down to live with the vomit he absolutely won't let out. No. No, they wouldn't do something like this. They're ninja—it goes against everything their parents, their teachers, their Hokage has taught. It's just a prank. Perhaps a bit scarier than the kind Iruka plays, but not so different. They went to the trouble of bringing him here; they wouldn't actually make him jump from this kind of height knowing that he wouldn't be able to jutsu his way to safety. No one, not even Bunya Hachi and his crew, is that cruel.

"Don't think you can do it?"

_Of course you can._

"Of course I can," Iruka echoes in agreement, then turns his attention to Hachi, who frowns with the air of one who's never experienced backtalk. "This is nothing. I've jumped from way higher than this during the Chuunin Exam."

"Didn't you fail that? Twice?"

"You did, too," Iruka says, and whatever is on his face makes something hateful spark in Hachi's eyes—now dark, almost entirely all pupil. "I'll take whatever you dish out, _Bunya_."

_You are strong, because I am of your mother and your mother was strong._

"Well, go on, then," Bunya says, smiling with all his teeth. "Jump, and you're in the group."

_Feel no fear and you will know the smell of triumph—salt and air and pain._

Iruka's calves ache with tension, the intent to spring forward writing itself into his tendons, encoding itself into his cells, and he has to gulp in a few breaths to stop himself from just doing it. It would be easy, so very easy to just take a running leap right off the heads of their leaders, to put himself in front of their fixed gazes and just fall. Anyone can fall, but none are more versed in the art than he—Iruka's dragged his family name down about as far as it can go.

_You would not fall so far._

The Hokage Monument is the highest thing in the entire village.

"I could just fall," he whispers, turning to face the edge.

"What are you waiting for, dead-last?" Bunya shouts, and Iruka hates him. Hates the way everyone loves him when he doesn't deserve it. Wants to turn around and let him feel the power of his rage, wants to—

_Wash him away._

"I'm not waiting for anything," Iruka hears himself say, mouth pulling into a grin so wide that his cheeks hurt and his eyes water.

_Fall, and I will catch you._

His right foot trembles only a little as he lifts it—

_Never turn your back, and I will always catch you._

Leans forward and—

_Because I am yours._

—chokes as the air in his lungs punches out of him leaving him reeling because the void beyond the edge fills with blue green gray black with storms and dark things that lurk in the depths and he plunges into it headfirst into the cold seeping through his threadbare jacket and worn pants to press against his skin as if it knows him as if it loves him the way no one has in years and years and years moving to envelope him so utterly completely embraced and the lines that make up his body his mind his everything blur into this vast terrifyingly familiar force that tastes like forever and smells like salt and forces its way inside invades his lungs his organs his blood is brackish and his brain is soaking and his cells his cells his cells expand and explode and someone is screaming above him below him around him there is the haunting long note of something so much bigger than he is the chatter of a group that calls him their own the many-armed embrace of family the dark shadow of danger and he's drifting he's falling he's _drowning_—

He tries to step back, to run, but he's swept up in it, this living endlessness that is older than the sky above, than the stone below, and it burrows so deep that he can't feel anything else inside of himself except its all-encompassing power. It leaks from his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and even as he chokes and struggles and fears it loves him so very much.

_They call you names, as if their hateful tongues deserve to address you at all. I would see the ridicule flow into fear and respect._

Slowly, the fight leaves him, and he can do little else but give himself to it. Iruka can feel its pleasure, its terrible adoration, and it rocks him as if he were its own child.

_I am your blood, and my will is yours, for you bear the name your mother gave you. I reside in many, but I sang only for her._

A long, sweet note slips around him, mournful and beautiful both, and he closes his eyes, listening, humming under the phantom touch of a gentle touch sweeping across the bridge of his nose, tracing the strip of his scar. She used to sing on the nights when the shadows seemed extra scary and dawn was an eternity away.

No, she didn't. His mother never sang—

_I was both her ebb and flow, but you…_

It rears up with a deafening roar, so immense that it blocks out the sky. It has no beginning, no end, but is both. He stares up at it, stares down at it, and everything he has ever been until this moment dissolves. He tries to cry out, call out for help, but the words stream from his lips and are lost. There is no saving him from this.

_You will be the whole of her._

He sees himself pitch forward, arms outstretched, palms open, and it sluices down his shoulders, kisses at his elbows, and pours forth like what he imagines chakra to be, but it's not. It's nothing the world has ever seen, and he watches, soaring in the sky, held by trillions and trillions of little hands, as Konoha bends beneath a will that is his to wield, set adrift in a wave of blood and power and aphotic intent.

_Let me into your limbs, your blood, your mantle, and together we will wash your pain from this flawed earth._

Yes.

_Yes?_

And the day will dawn to find those who doubted him, pitied him, and left him behind to the shadows scraping for his favor, proclaiming their love and loyalty, and he would see them drown in the crest of his power. It clamors for him to join it and instead he _becomes_ it, and together they rise above the dust and the doubt.

_All you must do is release me._

They lift their hand, fingers outstretched as if to touch the entirety of Konoha, and they open their mouth to answer—

"Don't."

_Release me!_

"I can only help you if I can find you. Don't go where I can't follow."

Gasping, clawing his way back to the surface, Iruka whispers, "_No._"

The song breaks over him like a wave, echoing faintly as it dissipates, and the vastness releases him with a grumble, distant thunder over faraway lands. Iruka sinks to his knees, panting, trembling in his too-thin jacket, and stares out from the edge of the Monument to where his village sprawls out elegantly, untouched.

He brings his hand up and stares at his palm, bone dry, the muscles twitching with an overload of adrenaline, and he can't stop the raw, painful gasps that escape him. He feels so small, and his skin is stretched uncomfortably over his bones. Every shallow breath he drags in threatens to split him at the seams. It's familiarity of every night he's spent alone in his apartment, defenseless and hurting in the dark, missing his mother and father the way he would his own limbs.

If that's the case, then all he has to do is wait for dawn. The sun will bring the comfort of a new day, a beginning, a kinder continuation.

He curls his arms around his shins and rests his forehead upon his knees. It's fine. Everything's fine. It was all…

_I will wait._

It wasn't real.

"You with me?"

"I don't know," Iruka whispers, then startles. Heart pounding, he turns and sees the armor-cut figure of an ANBU standing alone, the white of the mask curved elegantly to hide their face, the painted lines of the hound's snout frozen in a rictus of macabre amusement. Shakily, he scrambles to his feet. "Uh—"

"Tilt your head back for me."

_Obey ANBU in all respects._ It's a treatise to be followed in every situation, taught from the moment one can walk or speak. The grass is green, the sky is blue, and ANBU protect the village for any and all threats. If an ANBU member asks for something, you give it to the best of your ability, no questions. There are many problems inherent with that sort of blind submission, places where absolute power can corrupt—and probably has.

But Iruka is not stupid, so he tilts his head back.

"Look at me. Look in my eyes."

Swallowing, he makes himself stare into the blanked-out holes of the hound's eyes. A faint hint of movement lurks behind them, but the shadows prevent him from even catching the shape of the ANBU's eyes, the color. ANBU masks are brilliant screens.

"Is—What are you—"

"What color are your eyes normally?"

"Black," Iruka answers immediately. It's an easy answer to give; it's never not been true.

"Are you sure?"

Iruka breathes through his nose, ignoring the pained complaints in his legs and back, and says, "Yes. They're black. Why? Is there… is something wrong?"

"For a second, it looked like…"

There's no whisper of feet on the ground, no displacement of air, but the ANBU is suddenly right in front of him, so close that the red whorls in the mask are burning their pattern into his retinas.

"All right, you can relax. You're fine."

Exhaling, Iruka tilts his head down and forces his muscles to unclench. The ANBU takes a soundless step back.

"Am I in trouble? Are you—Are you on a mission?" What could he have possibly done to warrant a visit by an ANBU? Surely a couple of tacks on a chair isn't enough to brand him a threat to the village.

"Hm? No. I was passing through, and it looked as if there were a… situation," the ANBU says, and if Iruka had to make a guess at the tone he'd say it was bored. "You were hyperventilating. Your friends decided to leave you to it."

Iruka spits at the ground. "They're _not_ my friends."

They're even less than not-friends—now they're targets. He hopes Bunya and the rest of them are prepared for the ungodly firestorm of revenge that he's going to rain down upon them.

"Oh, good. Because I was going to tell you to get some new ones."

"Uh, right."

The ANBU hums, a rush of air caught by the mask. Iruka has no idea where the ANBU is actually looking. "I suppose I could just make them disappear, if you want. No one would ever find the bodies."

Iruka stares. "Are you volunteering to murder someone for me?"

"It was just a suggestion," the ANBU says airily. "No need to take that tone."

"There's a need when you threaten my friends."

"I thought they weren't your friends." There's a smile in the words, audible, and it makes Iruka grin.

"They're not, but that doesn't mean they deserve to _die_."

"Are you sure?" In a certain light, the red mouth of the hound looks as though it's curved up slightly, and the playful thread that winds around the words wraps around Iruka, strengthening the stitching in his old coat and leaving him almost too warm.

"Pretty sure, yeah. They _did_ try to make me jump off a mountain, though, so they do deserve _something_. A good scare. Can you be scary, Hound-san? I mean, the mask alone…"

"I can be _terrifying_ when the situation calls for it," Hound agrees. "And there are many shadows and noises in a house at night that can be used. I wouldn't even need to touch them to make them wet their pants."

It startles a laugh out of Iruka, who has never been able to resist a good prank as long as he's been alive. He's never thought to try and trick someone in their own home. It's an inspired cruelty he can't help but admire. "Have you played a trick like that before?"

"Yep." Hound shifts his weight onto his left leg and waves his hand through the air. Even though it's a careless gesture, it's the most elegant thing Iruka has ever seen. People have died by that hand.

Iruka wants to see it more than he's wanted anything in his life, wants to curl close to black armor and pale skin and watch from the shadows as Bunya and his stupid friends learn their lesson. Hound has a really nice voice; he probably has an even nicer laugh—low and smoky, a sliver of light that would find a very nice home in Iruka's ears.

"Well, no one actually lived to talk about it afterward, but I could modify it for you, I s'pose."

"That's… uh, nice of you," Iruka says, and then laughs. He holds out a hand. There's dirt under his nails; he'd be ashamed of it if he didn't suspect something worse lurks under Hound's. "Umino Iruka."

Hound pauses, and for a horrible moment Iruka thinks the still line of his shoulders is masking killing intent, but then Iruka's hand is taken with a wary hesitance, as if it's been a long time since someone offered their hand. Hound's grip is firm, softened somewhat by the leather of his gloves, and he shakes Iruka's hand slowly.

"It's okay. I know you can't tell me your name," Iruka says.

"I wouldn't be a very good ANBU if I did," comes the agreement. "So, would you have done it?"

"Done what?"

"Jumped."

He wants to say no, wants to laugh off the cramps in his legs from where the muscles coiled and held tight in preparation for a leap. Umino Iruka is brave, but he's not stupid—except when he is. Admitting to it will do nothing but disappoint Hound, who probably has never done a stupid thing in his life, not if he's wearing the painted mask of the hound, the leader of Konoha's own pack of legal assassins.

But he stares into the blank eyes of the hound mask and feels the lie hit the back of his teeth. "Probably."

"Why?"

"I don't know." But he does. "Haven't you ever wanted to be someone else? Anyone other than yourself?"

Hound says nothing for a long moment, and then, "Jumping off a mountain would make you someone else?"

Iruka makes a face; there's no need to say it like _that_. "Normal Iruka would never have jumped."

"Was it because of what they said?"

Iruka blinks. "What'd they say?"

"About you being chakra-dead. Is it true?"

Before Hound even finishes speaking, the denial is building up an army on Iruka's tongue, its weaponry fine-honed and hot, just off the blacksmith's fire, and all he'd need to do is open his mouth and attack. It's a campaign that has never failed and his army has become renown in the village for its strength and lack of mercy.

"You can't just ask something like that," Iruka manages to get out through clenched teeth.

"I didn't mean anything by it," Hound says.

Something cracks, a hard thing made of sand and shell, and the anger leaks from him until Iruka can do nothing except avert his gaze to the village below. He wants to talk about it; wants to shift the weight of his failures onto someone who can bear it, even for a little while.

"They're not entirely sure if I am. I mean, I can do some things, but not the way everyone else can." He sighs. "With my luck? I probably am."

"What's it like? Not having chakra, I mean."

He bites down on the re-mobilization of the terrible words on his tongue. "I don't know. What's it like being ANBU?"

"It's not all it's cracked up to be." There's an almost gentle pressure against his fingers and it takes Iruka a moment to realize his hand is still held by long fingers, the handshake stretching out into something that sets his cheeks on fire and knocks on the door of a possessive creature that is loath to let go. "Not having chakra, though… There are those who would say it's a blessing."

Iruka snorts and absently shakes their joined hands between them. "Thanks, but I don't think it matters since we live in a _ninja village_ and I need it to be a _ninja_. It doesn't matter to them; all they see is someone who won't make it."

The mask tilts a little and Hound releases Iruka's hand, thumb brushing against his palm in a way that sets Iruka's cheeks on _fire_. It's such a little thing to get flustered over, but it's the hint of daring behind it that makes his heart pound. No one's ever held his hand before. He's not sure how to get Hound to do it again.

"All right. We'll be other people for a little while."

"Wait, can you—ANBU aren't even allowed to talk to civilians like this."

"Oh yeah? Know a lot of ANBU, do you?"

Iruka blinks. "I—No, you're the first, but—"

Hound drops suddenly into a sit with all the grace of a cat, legs dangling off the edge of the mountain as if it were any other day and he was anyone else, and pats the space next to him. After a moment, Iruka hunkers down beside him.

"I've got some time, and it's what you wanted. So, who are we? Strangers? friends?"

Iruka turns to answer, but his eyes snag on the wiry build of Hound's arms, the strong line of his shoulders and neck, the wild silver of his hair.

"I-I don't know." It takes him a few tries, but he manages to tear his gaze away from Hound to stare out at the village, face hot. "Yes. Yes, we're friends."

"Always nice to have a few of those, huh, Iruka-kun? Do I call you that? _Iruka-kun_?"

"I hate that." Iruka pauses. "Actually, I don't know if I hate that. No one's ever called me that before."

Hound's legs swing absently to and fro, and he shrugs. "Do you _want_ to be someone who hates being called that?"

He thinks for a minute, then sits up a little straighter, alight with discovery of this new, better Iruka. "You call me Iruka-kun and I say I hate it, but I really don't. I like it because it makes me feel important to you."

It takes him a second to realize why Hound is snorting to himself, and by the time he finishes replaying his words back his face is bright red and a whole new army is waving the white flag on his tongue, stammering through a battlefield of denials.

"I-I didn't mean—I _meant_ to say—The other you. The pretend you. The you who's my friend. Wait, no, not that we're not friends—Oh god, I'm going to shut up now," Iruka groans, burying his head into his hands. Hound is laughing. At him. This is the worst. He may as well jump off the mountain anyway.

"So, you're someone who's important to me, _Iruka-kun_, and I'm…"

_Iruka-kun_. He shivers. "You're…?"

Sounding a little lost, Hound muses, "Huh. I don't know. I don't know how to be anyone else. Who should I be?"

At that, Iruka lifts his head, mortification falling away in the face of Hound's genuine confusion. "Whoever you want."

"That could be anyone."

"What do you mean? Do you… Don't you like yourself?"

Hound chuckles, and it cuts every part of Iruka to hear it. "Not particularly."

"But you're ANBU!" It's unfathomable, that someone who attained such a coveted rank wouldn't be proud, would stew behind the famed mask in self-loathing. "How can you—"

"And you're genin," Hound says, reasonable, factual. Iruka hates it. His body itches to pound his regard into the space behind Hound's mask until he understands. "You're innocent. You haven't been tainted. You haven't... You shouldn't hate yourself, either. The person behind this mask has seen and done things you can't imagine, and I don't like him."

"Well, I like you." The best part is, it's the truth. "Besides, I don't know who you are now, so being someone else isn't going to be a huge change for me. You can be you and I'll never know. I mean, don't do anything that could, you know, damage your mission or anything, but why don't you… I don't know, do something you've always wanted to do. Scream how much you hate the color red. Graffiti the Monument. Kick a tree over. Hold my hand again."

Brave. Umino Iruka is brave. And a little bit stupid. Mostly brave.

The mask tilts thoughtfully. "My hands are pretty dirty. Bloody. Sure you want to hold them?"

Heat rushes back into Iruka's cheeks, but his eyes linger on the deceptively clean leather of Hound's gloves. "Or don't do any of that. Just sit here and enjoy the view—do you get to do a lot of that as ANBU?"

"I… don't. Huh." As if the thought of just stopping and looking around never occurred to Hound before this moment.

Triumphant, Iruka grins and sweeps his arm out over the village. "Now's your chance."

The silence that falls over them is comfortable, a strong and sturdy string that binds them at the wrists, and Iruka gratefully relaxes into it. His teachers, his classmates, Mizuki, the Hokage—they talk and let him fill in the spaces between their words, but the moment he stops is the moment they leave.

"You know, I don't get to see this part of Konoha very often." Wistfulness creeps into Hound's tone, and Iruka has to consciously stop himself from asking about the parts of Konoha he _does_ see. "It's so quiet up here. Bit too cold for my tastes, though."

"Winter'll be coming soon. Do you wear warmer things during the cold months?" Iruka eyes the parts of Hound's shoulders not covered by the armor.

"Do you?"

The collar of Iruka's threadbare coat doesn't hide the angry flush that steals over his cheeks when he ducks down into it, but it does its best. "I'll get it fixed before then."

"Parents don't make a lot?"

Iruka clutches at the frayed hem of his jacket. "I thought we were being other people."

"Ah. Sorry, I didn't realize." Hound turns his head slightly, just enough that Iruka can see the curve of a strong chin in the shadows of the mask. "I didn't mean anything by it. Just wondering, that's all."

"Sorry," Iruka mutters, not particularly sorry at all. "I do well enough."

"What did your parents think about you being chakra-dead?"

The army mobilizes, ready for battle. "Jeez! Would you stop asking about it? Yes, I'm a useless genin in a ninja village. What does it matter to you, anyway?"

"It was just a question," Hound says tightly. "I didn't mean—"

"Anything by it, I know," Iruka finishes for him, just a little bit mean, enough to make himself feel better until the lump in his throat can be swallowed down. "Just shut up about it! You don't need to know anything like that… unless I'm being interrogated. Am I being interrogated,_ANBU-san_?"

Because Hound can languish on the mountain with a no-name genin all he wants, but the mask is his face, the armor his skin, and no amount of pretending will change that. This whole stupid game of theirs teeters on the edge of a blade stained with the blood of who knows how many people.

The silence that follows is pointed, a hard, sharp thing that glints like a sword fresh off the whetstone. Iruka shifts, unable to get comfortable, the dirt and tiny rocks beneath him suddenly unbearable. His cheeks ache from the bite of the wind and his fingers rub together to capture any kind of warmth. He hates it.

"Look—"

"I'm… sorry." Hound looks out over the village, maybe trying to pick out his own house, thinking of warm tea or a comfortable bed. Maybe he even has parents waiting for him. Iruka follows the line of the mask's gaze and sees nothing. "I'm not all that good. At knowing what's okay and what isn't."

"I'm someone else, remember? Just talk to me like I'm one of your friends," Iruka grumbles, swiping at his eyes with the edge of his hand.

Hound says nothing, then offers tentatively, "I'm not good at having friends, either."

"So we'll just sit here and be terrible at it together."

Whatever he'd been expecting—rejection, arrest, or worse, laughter—doesn't come, and the space between them is filled with the cold wind that lives on the mountain, pawing at Iruka's insufficient jacket and undulating up his spine with a soft hiss and a rattle.

But then there's the brush of butter-soft leather against his fingers, a hesitance in the touch that makes Iruka's eyes prickle in something other than bitter resentment and loneliness for a change, and he watches as Hound's fingers curve around his own. Every universe comes to a trembling standstill and then slides into one another; the only thing of note in this new, converged world is the gentle, unsure way the hand of a killer holds his.

"Is this… okay?" Hound asks quietly, his voice slightly distorted by the mask, the words vibrating all the way down at the bottom of his register.

"I'm sorry." It rushes out of him like water, unstoppable now that it's been undammed. Hound's fingers tense as if they mean to slip away and Iruka curls his own around them, stopping them. Their fingers slide together, his skin aching where the leather rubs against it, and Iruka thinks about ripping off the glove and tossing it over the edge. "I'm sorry I yelled. I'm not mad."

"It's okay, though? Friends do this sometimes, right?"

"I… don't know." Mizuki doesn't really touch him outside of pushing him down. "But it's okay. It can be… it can be something we do," Iruka says softly. The sound of his pants sliding against the dirt is lost to the wind, and Hound turns to watch as he scoots a little closer, their arms brushing. "Is this okay?"

He receives no reply, just the reassuring press of leather.

"Tell me something," Hound says, and Iruka—a little bit more daring than a thumb brushing across a palm—rests his temple against Hound's shoulder. When he isn't immediately shaken off, he allows himself to close his eyes.

"Tell you what? About the other me?"

"About normal you. Do your eyes change color often? How did you get that scar? What's your favorite food?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"They're the only things I don't know about you."

Iruka rubs his cheek against cold skin, feeling too big for his body, too charged. He wants to explode. Chakra-dead or not, he wants to launch himself from the edge, just open his arms and soar. "You just met me. You don't know anything about me."

_You know nothing of our depths and depths and depths._

"Not true. I know your name is Umino Iruka, that you might jump off a mountain if some dumb kid asks, and you like to trick people who hurt you. You're bad at making friends, but you want them, because you think you're alone. You've got a quick temper, but you're even quicker to forgive, and while you don't have a lot of money you make do with what you've got. You're…" What started out as a smug list of observations falters, becomes soft and almost lost to the wind. "You're a bit weird, but interesting. Kind. You're kind. And your eyes are black most of the time."

During his first year at the Academy, he fell off the high climb and cut his head open. He bled everywhere, and there's still a stain on the dojo floor where it happened; he was even given blood at the hospital to make up for what he lost, and a bunch of nurses tutted at him and told him how grateful he ought to be. Even the Hokage came for a visit, bringing apples and his shogi board. But even with his skull showing just a little bit through his hair that day, Iruka didn't feel nearly as exposed as he does now.

"So, I know you," Hound concludes, and wraps an arm around Iruka's shoulders like it's something they do all the time. Like he knows Iruka. "You didn't answer my questions, by the way."

"My favorite food is dango, I don't remember how I got the scar, and my eyes are black all the time. Hound—" He rides out the frantic flutter of his heart, the crest of the blood in his ears. He's so warm. "I wish I could know things about you. Your name. Your face. Your favorite food."

"I can't tell you my name. I can't tell you anything," Hound says, and turns to rest the mask lightly atop Iruka's hair. "But I want to."

"Names aren't important." Not really. Not nearly as important as the feel of gloved fingers between his own. "... But not even your favorite food?"

"Not even that."

The arm around his shoulders tightens just a bit, and Iruka smiles a little. They sit slumped into each other for long, comfortable minutes; maybe for hours, or even years, the lines of their bodies merging, until he isn't sure where they begin and end.

_You are the beginning and the end._

"I can't stay for much longer." Hound shifts, belying the statement by holding him closer, the embrace as thrilling as it is comforting.

"I figured you couldn't hang around all day," Iruka says quietly. "I'll be sad to go back to being normal Iruka."

"I'll be sad to leave him."

_So don't_. It burns on his tongue, desperate to be said. _We'll go somewhere together. We'll be the people we want to be somewhere else. _He'll be a brilliant shinobi who isn't chakra-dead and secretly likes being called _Iruka-kun_, and Hound will be someone with a name and face that are his own. Their future yawns out from where their fingers are interlocked—a place with the smell of salt in the air and white cliffs; a cozy apartment, warm mugs of tea on a clean kotatsu, smiles, laughter. Soft touches. Maybe even… maybe even kisses. It makes him dizzy and hot just thinking about it, peeling the mask away and pushing up into the mouth beneath it. Maybe they would kiss all the time, because they know everything about each other.

Iruka swallows hard, nose and eyes burning with an impending storm, and he gasps out, "Why?"

"Everyone looks at the mask like there's a monster behind it. They're not wrong. I am. I'm a monster, so they run, or scream, or wait for me to kill them, because what else do you do when you're faced with a monster? But you… you gave me your name. You gave me your hand, just because you wanted to."

There's a low, thoughtful hum, a rumble against Iruka's that shakes everything loose, and Hound moves a bit, cracking their bodies apart to let a little bit of air through between them.

This is it, then. This is the end of this. The game is over; reality has cleared the board, and soon there will be nothing to show Hound was ever here except for a swirl of leaves and the faint warmth lingering in his hand.

He wants to cry a little. He wants to rail against the village for binding his happiness in a white mask and calling it the shinobi way. For making him be the person who knows what it is to hold someone's hand for the first and last time.

_I should've jumped_, he thinks miserably. _It would've been better than this._

But instead, Iruka exhales. He is a ninja of Konoha, or he will be someday, and if this is to be his _shinobi way_ then he will follow it to the best of his ability, no matter how much it hurts. He clambers to his feet and pulls Hound with him, allowing himself to squeeze the hand in his once more before letting go completely.

"You're not a monster. You're my friend. You're _mine_, and I'll never forget you," Iruka promises, not quite able to keep the tremor out of his voice.

"I've given you nothing to remember," Hound says. The apology weighs down the words. He lifts a gloved finger to trace the skin just beneath Iruka's right eye, unbearably gentle. "It'd probably be best if you forgot all about this."

"Probably," Iruka agrees. "But I won't."

He looks up through his lashes, drinking in the deep red whorls of the hound mask, the porcelain handsome but frightening in its anonymity. There could be anyone beneath it—someone he's walked past countless times in the street, or even one of his teachers. But there's something young about Hound, something sweet in the curves of his gloved fingers, the silver of his hair, that makes Iruka wonder.

It doesn't matter. Hound will always be Hound, and Iruka has promised to never forget him.

"Thanks, normal Iruka," Hound murmurs, slowly disentangling their hands and leaving Iruka trembling and very, very cold.

"Wait!" Because he knows Hound is about to disappear into nothing—a dramatic exit in a swirl of wind and leaves, and then that will be it.

Obediently, Hound waits.

Iruka opens his mouth, but the words don't come. He's not sure he has them, if they've even been written yet, can be arranged in such a way that he'll be understood by whoever it is that stands in front of him.

Hound says nothing, and the mask tilts, as if it were a real dog hearing something interesting and new for the first time.

It's on the tip of his tongue to explain, to tell Hound about what happened when he first came—about the—the thing that… Something both cold and hot is making itself known between his eyes, flaring brightly and then pulsing in a steady rhythm. He can't quite grasp it, and the longer he waits to talk, more of the before disappears from him, until it's nothing but the bare whisper of a forgotten dream, a murmur of sound from far away.

"Hey," Hound says, taking pity on him. "Are you—?"

Iruka slumps a bit, suddenly very tired. Once he's done getting sweet revenge on Bunya, he's going to sleep for a week. Maybe longer. Maybe forever. "I… I don't know. I can't—Never mind. I'll be fine."

Hound says nothing, does nothing; stands there like he's about to put down roots and call the mountain home—a terrifying scarecrow, keeping watch over the village and all its inhabitants. If he does, Iruka will put down roots right beside him.

Mustering up a smile, he tries to look disarming and responsible. Like he's not looking for excuses to keep Hound for a few seconds longer. Like anyone else. "I think I'm still a little—" He wiggles his fingers next to his temple "—from before. Really. I'll be okay. I'm going to go straight home."

There's a pulse of chakra—chakra Iruka can _see_, like lightning bursting across the sky—and the hard lines of Hound's body begin smudging and pulling apart, as if someone had sighed and blown him away like dandelion clocks. "Go to the hospital first, just to make sure."

"I will." He won't.

It wins him an amused snort. "Don't disappear into yourself like that again. Don't go where I can't follow."

Iruka sucks in a breath, heart thudding, and nods dumbly.

"Oh, and if you're looking for help in getting back at your not-friends, go find Shiranui Genma. He'll give you a hand." Two fingers lift and cock in farewell. "Take care of those not-always-black eyes for me, normal Iruka."

"What color did you think they were?" Iruka asks, his always-and-forever-black eyes burning with a caged storm.

"Blue. For a second back there, they looked blue."

With a sound like an exhale, the last of the mask disappears into nothing, and Iruka is alone again. The wind paws at him, and he shivers, turning up his coat against it the best he can and casting a heavy look out where Konoha bustles below him. After a moment, he looks back to where Hound had been, and feels the absence like a knife to the gut.

"Thank you," he whispers. It's what he should have said the second those gloved fingers slipped between his own like water, like they belonged there. Before anything else, he should have said that.

Sucking in a shuddering breath, he turns back to Konoha.

The sky is losing light, the sun dipping beneath the horizon, and he'll need to start for the village now if he is to make it home before the gates shut. Sleep won't find him tonight; there's a revenge plot to hatch, after all. Shiranui Genma is that chuunin kid who's always chewing senbon; somewhere underneath all that lazy charm is probably a mean streak an acre wide. It's always the quiet ones.

_You have dammed me well, First Son, and I will wait._

Time to get things in order. He'll start with Bunya Hachi and work his way up from there.

As he turns to begin the trek back to the village, something pushes and pulls at him, a susurrus of all-encompassing power, like the crashing of waves.

_But you cannot hold back the tide forever._

* * *

><p>Notes: I re-wrote this stupid chapter, like, 19 times. What started as a cursory introduction between two characters morphed into... ridiculousness. Oops.<p> 


	3. Omens

**Author's Notes:**

This chapter is pretty much filler as far as the plot's concerned, but I usually try to have a chapter devoted to characterization and development in my longer works. Who doesn't like a little exposition?

All right, fine. I really just wanted to write a whole lot of Genma.

* * *

><p>"All right, everyone, listen up. The final round of the Chuunin Exam's tomorrow, which means it's time to place your bets! Who's gonna make it, who's gonna fail, and who's gonna die in horrible yet hilarious wa—ow, <em>hey<em>."

Thanks to years of practicing on unruly children under the age of twelve, Iruka is able to nail Genma between the eyes with his pen without so much as looking up. "That's quite enough of that, thank you." To Anko, he hands back her mission report and says, "You forgot to fill out the entire middle section. Again. Actually, I'm not sure if you've_ ever_ remembered to fill it out. Next time, just turn in a complete report the first time around and save us both the trouble."

"Just take it, Iruka."

"I can't, Anko-san, you know the rules. Just fill it in really quick, please. I've got a line behind you…"

"I haven't slept in four days, the dango kiosk is going to close in ten minutes, and I know twenty-nine ways to kill you without spilling a single drop of blood," Anko says sweetly, and Iruka has no doubt in his mind that it's true. If he had half a brain in his head, he'd cow to her and fudge the report himself.

But some of the people in line are starting to shift and mutter amongst themselves, the air buzzing with rising discontent and chakra, which is the last thing he needs, so he rustles the report encouragingly and pastes on a sunny smile. "And you can tell me _all_ about it… in the middle section. Which needs to be filled out before you can get paid."

"They'll never find your body," Anko growls, snatching the report from his hand and grabbing a pen from the cup by his elbow.

"You're doing our shinobi a disservice, Anko-san. They might find all the pieces eventually," he says, demure. "Next!"

Rubbing at the bridge of his nose, Genma watches Anko storm away. "Do you need a wheelbarrow to carry your balls around? Jeez. Remind me again why you're not jounin?"

It's a question with which Iruka's familiar, an old friend he finds himself running into on the odd mission he takes now and again, or in this very room amongst those who actually bear the title and can't imagine that he could ever be satisfied as a low-rank.

He smiles a little and says, "Because I don't need it."

It's the same answer he always gives. It even has the virtue of being true. There have been successful jounin who depend solely on taijutsu and cleverness, so he knows he could do it if he wanted, but his teaching certificate hangs on the wall of his sitting room for all to see and he can give the names, strengths, and weaknesses of all his current and former students at the drop of a hat. His fingers hold the indents made by the bodies of chalk, and parents of the next generation know him by name, stop him in the market sometimes to chat or thank him for helping their children realize their potential. Tamaru-sensei, once a spectre to be feared and hated when he was a boy, is now a respected colleague who, upon entering Iruka's classroom for the first time, shook his hand and said, _I always knew you'd find your path. I just wish that path hadn't been paved with thumbtacks. _Teaching isn't just his duty—he's well-suited to it in a way that most aren't. It's not the wild and fantastical life of a jounin, but it's his and he's content.

"Hm." Genma chews thoughtfully on his senbon for a moment, leaning up against the desk with the impatient air of someone in need of something to do. It's never boded well for anyone within a fifty mile radius when Genma gets like this.

"What would your thing be, if you were, though?"

"My _thing_?"

"Mm. Your signature. You know, Asuma has the knuckles, I've got my senbon… What about you, though? Smacking their hands with a ruler when they've been bad? Probably making them wash erasers."

"Probably keeping _your_ dumb ass out of—" He's interrupted by the sudden thrust of a report under his nose. "Ah, thank you. Any particular issues, Yamanaka-san?"

Yamanaka shrugs, impatience writ into his otherwise kind features. The mission, a C-Rank with a surprisingly decent price tag, was a lengthy one. "Nah, not really."

Iruka used to wonder at Ino having such a steady hand for a girl her age, but as he goes over Yamanaka's report with its tidy penmanship and no-nonsense checked boxes, it suddenly makes perfect sense.

He stamps it and adds it to the pile. "Thank you for your hard work, Yamanaka-san."

Yamanaka smiles wryly. "Haven't really talked to you since Ino was in the Academy, sensei. How's the latest batch treating you?"

Iruka opens his mouth to give a pleasantly rote reply, then pauses, remembering that one of the Aburame kids brought a hornet's nest to class today and then _dropped it_. The ensuing chaos and many trips to the nurse for bandages and epinephrine injections were enough to drive Iruka to drink—unfortunately, Nobuko-sensei's secret alcohol drawer has an exploding tag welded to it, the greedy old bag. Shortly thereafter, Inuzuka Michi released a band of feral dogs she decided to adopt into the Academy, the classroom windows will never recover after Konohamaru's little _slime jutsu_, a girl named Hironobu Junko set fire to the entire training field, and three new teachers quit on the spot.

_Pass on your will of fire, Iruka. Lead the coming generations to glory, Iruka. They're just kids, Iruka, what's the worst that could happen?_

That he hasn't snapped and roamed the countryside killing kids under the age of ten with a spoon is a miracle. In all honesty, he's too tired at the end of the day to even make the attempt. Maybe _that's_ why he's so well-suited to it.

He hopes the smile on his face is even a little convincing. "I'm never bored."

Yamanaka walks away laughing like it's the funniest damn thing he's ever heard, and tosses a friendly hand up in goodbye. Iruka hopes he falls down the stairs.

"Spoken like a true masochist," Genma says, wagging the senbon between his teeth.

"I will make you eat that thing, I swear to every god," Iruka grouses.

Genma grins. "A _brave_ masochist. Speaking of, seen much of the brat lately?"

"Naruto?"

"No," Genma says with an unnecessary eye roll. "Your _other_ ear-piercingly loud foster kid. Yes, Naruto."

Warmth blossoms in his chest so suddenly that it manifests into a shiver that wracks his entire body. He has no right to be so pleased at the thought of that loud-mouthed whirlwind being part of his family, that somewhere in those veins Umino blood mingles with that of Yondaime and the beast that killed him. Naruto's pain was ignored for so long—believed to be less worthy than everyone else's, even Iruka's own. It was easier to pass by a gilded-haired little boy with cheeks dirtied by tears than to stop and acknowledge his suffering with even a simple kind word. Iruka had been his teacher, his _guide_, charged to protect all his students at the basest of levels, and he failed.

He has no right.

The thought is dispelled by a smack upside the head, and Iruka startles with a strangled yell frankly unbecoming a ninja.

Lowering his hand, Genma looks unimpressed. "The kid loves you, moron, so don't start pulling that maudlin bullshit on me. I know how you get. Is he ready for tomorrow?"

Iruka pushes the self-pity into a box to be reopened another day. "He's been training with some random guy who knocked out the jounin-sensei he was _supposed_ to train with, which—I think I need to talk to the Hokage about it. I don't know how I feel about our impressionable genin being allowed to spend time with weirdos."

"'Weirdo'? Isn't that a little harsh?"

"Naruto calls him _Perverted Sage_," Iruka says. It could very well be an exaggeration—someone who invented Sexy Jutsu has no room to cast stones—but the long-suffering look Naruto gets whenever he mentions his latest mentor speaks of a terrible truth. If Naruto comes out of this new training with a predilection for bath houses, Iruka won't be responsible for his actions.

Genma's eyebrows nearly brush the edge of his bandana, and he chews thoughtfully. "Well, it's not like we all haven't been there, right?"

Iruka stares. "Do I even want to ask?"

There's a whisper of metal that cuts through the air, a familiar sound that puts everyone in the room on edge, and a kunai embeds itself into the desk between his third and fourth fingers. Threaded through the kunai's finger grasp is a rolled-up scroll.

He blinks at it like a slack-jawed idiot and looks up to see Anko standing in the doorway, one foot already in the hall.

"Well?" She says, like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. "Isn't there something you should be saying right about now?"

"'Help, help, there's a psychotic nin throwing kunai at teachers, someone take her down'?" Genma suggests helpfully.

"Shiranui, you can kiss the little strawberry beauty mark on the left cheek of my perfect ass."

"Name a time and a place," Genma purrs.

"You wish," Anko says. The smirk that slithers across her face is _terrifying_.

"I really don't."

Having made a career of tuning out stupidity, Iruka squares his shoulders and unspools the report, giving it a quick once-over. The weapons list section is filled out in Anko's beautiful, sweeping calligraphy. The impact is somewhat lessened by the fact that it's been written into the shape of a hand giving the finger.

Choking back a laugh, he stamps the report and trills, "Thank you for your hard work, Anko-san. Have a wonderful night."

"Die," Anko says as she ambles out.

"Always a pleasure, Anko!" Genma calls after her, then slumps back against the desk, already bored.

Iruka gathers the reports and wraps a rubber band around them, frowning when the edge of one slices through the webbing between his thumb and forefinger, the skin parting as if kissed. "If I were a betting man, I'd wager a snake being the last thing you ever see. Remind me again why _you're_ jounin?"

"Because I'm crazy skilled," Genma says, shrugging. "And I think the exam proctor was drunk that day."

"Sounds about right."

Four shinobi hand in their reports—three of them chuunin, one a jounin with part of his bottom lip missing—before Genma turns a too-interested look his way.

"Now that the kid's out of your hair for a while, whatcha been up to? Have you been doing anything interesting lately?"

If it were anyone else, he'd suspect that of being a line, but Genma would never stray into that territory, not when they've known each other for so long. Genma had been nearly nineteen years old when Iruka, hair still smelling of the cold air atop the Hokage Monument, knocked on his window and asked if he wanted to make a bully cry. And Genma, alone in his room while many of the other kids his age were out and about with friends, alone the way Iruka was alone, had smiled slowly and said around the senbon between his teeth, "What'dja have in mind?"

Outside of some good-natured ribbing, not once did a word of enmity twist around the senbon to cross Genma's lips; he never pushed Iruka down or away, never called him _dead-last_, or brought up the Nine-Tails just to get a rise out of him. He made Iruka's pranks better, his focus sharper, and the fact that Genma was an entire rank above him never seemed to factor into things. He listened when Iruka spoke, laughed when Iruka joked, and seemed desperately glad to see him. There were days when Genma came and found _him_, an odd change that Iruka was wary of enjoying too much, lest it stop. But it didn't. Genma was the friend Iruka had never allowed himself to imagine having, the stopper that plugged the hole in his life.

Genma will never know the depth of Iruka's gratitude. Mostly because he'd never let Iruka hear the end of it.

"And by 'doing,' I mean sex," Genma clarifies with a grin, rolling the senbon deftly over his tongue. "C'mon, sensei. The spinster thing is really starting to bore me. You're wound so tight that my balls shrivel whenever I see you."

"Please don't tell me about your balls, ever," Iruka groans.

"You're a nice-looking guy, and we've all heard you shouting after Naruto for a variety of reasons over the years. I'd put good money down on you being an all-night screamer."

A couple of the people in line poke their heads out, faces alight with interest. If he listens carefully, Iruka can actually hear the sound of his reputation imploding.

"I will literally _pay_ you to stop talking."

Genma chortles. "That kind of money doesn't even exist."

There are many concerns in a ninja's life: the success of a mission, loyalty to their village and Hokage, training to maintain their body—among many other things. But the biggest and most pressing of the lot is that of a sharply-honed mind descending into madness. Many break under the pressures of shinobi life, unable to withstand the consequences of being mired in so much death and destruction. It's a valid worry for most and a reality for others. But on the list of things Iruka needs to worry about, the sudden onset of insanity is on page twelve after _Is Ichiraku using too much miso in their broth?_

At least he thought it was. He never would have pegged _Genma_ as being the catalyst of his downward spiral into lunacy, but in hindsight, he probably should've seen it coming.

"So there's this jounin I know—"

"Oh my god, you're still talking," Iruka says, horrified.

"He's got really big hands. Like, ridiculously big. Possibly because of some weird condition, I don't know, but the guy can break boulders with barely a thought. Just—bam! Gravel."

The next shinobi in line gives Iruka a pitying look.

"Imagine having those hands hold you up against a wall—"

"Genma, do you _want_ me to set you on fire? Is that what this is? You keep opening your mouth, and all I hear is _Please send me to the burn unit, Iruka._"

"He sort of smells like feet, though, so maybe not. The point still stands: we've got to find someone who'll give it to you _good_. Someone who has an actual name and face."

Iruka sucks in a breath, but it stalls in his throat. "Genma!"

"Unless you've got a thing for masks."

The words crackle up the length of his spine, a lit fuse that rides up and explodes at the base of his skull. The shock wave passes through every single nerve, every pulse point, through muscle, sinew, and bone. He shudders, clenching his teeth. Push it down. Push it _down_. "Genma, shut up."

Deep inside, something stirs.

"Oh, come on," Genma says. "You're, what, twenty-four? That's practically middle age for us, and what do you have to show for it? Seeing the occasional mutt isn't a sign, you know, and hanging around waiting for some anonymous nin to come back for you isn't doing you any favors."

"Genma," he tries again, tongue loose and thick in his mouth. His vision swims a little. "You promised—"

There's a familiar twitching in his spine, a niggle rubbing against bone that begs to be itched but can't be found, and he's felt this before. He pushes at it, forces it down, but it rears up against him, interested, ravenous, streaking through every nerve, artery and vein, sinking into the folds and wrinkles of tissue and gray matter until it coats every part of him. It hungers for attention, whines for release, and he thinks of the last time it surfaced like this. A leak had sprung from a hole in his spine the size of a fuuma shuriken blade, and Mizuki—who lied and called it friendship—had stood and gloated over him, pressing his foot down and laughing, _laughing_, as the blade slipped a little further in. The urge to rise up and spend himself into the forest, to trickle down Mizuki's throat until the body busted at its traitorous seams, was overwhelming.

_Wash him away_. It had come from inside, a thousand voices clamoring to be acknowledged. _Take me up as your sword and wash him from this earth._

"Genma," he grits out, casting a wild, frightened gaze at the shinobi in line and ambling around the mission room. They're all too close. "That's enough."

But Genma doesn't pay him any heed, or simply refuses to listen, and instead calls out, "Hey, Raidou! Stop boring those lovely ladies and come over here for a second. You've gotta hear about this weird fuck dream Iruka had about an ANBU when he was fift—"

Before the sentence finishes, Iruka is on his feet, chair clattering backwards, with clawed fingers gouged into the front of Genma's flak vest. He vaguely hears someone gasp somewhere in the room, but he can't see anything except white, can't hear anything but the whispers of encouragement, _your secrets spill past his lips as if they were his to freely give, wash him away_, _wash him from this earth_, and the blood pounding in his ears like the crash of waves against rock. It would be easy, so very easy to hold Genma down, rinse away the bonds that bind them together—friendship, brotherhood, _nakama_—and flood his imperfect, fragile body with the true power of its rage. It has been dammed for far too long in old blood and young skin, and those who once screamed and cried out for it now whisper. They would do well to remember to whom they ought thank for their insignificant lives, as if any of them could leave a lasting mark; perhaps if it makes an example of the little crab in its thrall then—

"Iruka." Genma holds very still. "Iruka. Relax, man, _jeez_."

The bone-white of the senbon between Genma's mouth catches its attention, the purse of lips tight and ready; one focused muscle twitch will embed it in Iruka's forehead. The thing inside him surges, singing at the promise of release, a battle for honor, and he shoves it down as far as he can the moment the white in his vision begins to recede, retreating to sulk elsewhere.

A whisper of intent moves through the air, over a dozen ninja in the room primed to intervene, hands on their weapons, fingers curled should a binding seal need to be made. Iruka comes back to himself, washing up on the shores of consciousness and soaked through with shame and uneasiness.

"It's fine," Genma calls out, cheerful, but his gaze on Iruka is coldly calculating and not a little bit surprised. "Just pushed our favorite teacher a little too far, it seems. What else is new?"

Slow to follow is the sound of weapons being put away.

"Genma…" He just attacked a jounin. A _special_ jounin. He ought to release Genma immediately and then beg for leniency, but he's a little stupid and a lot brave, so he shakes Genma hard, once. "It was real. _He_ was real. I told you about that in confidence, Shiranui Genma, and you made me a promise, so now we're going to honor that promise and _shut our mouths_ about it for the foreseeable future. Are we clear?"

Genma stares at him, plumbing the depths of him for some kind of understanding, and it takes him a moment before he nods and mutters, "Yeah. Yeah, we're clear, sorry."

Three months into their friendship—after the night they carried out what Genma gleefully called Operation: Childhood Trauma—he finally told Genma about the day an ANBU sat with him atop the Hokage Monument and held his hand as if it were something precious.

His confession was whispered into the night air, the two of them lying on Genma's roof, curled toward each other like parentheses and manfully ignoring the fact that it was too cold to be outside at all.

_"So, are you in love with this guy?" Genma had asked, chewing thoughtfully on his senbon, the part of his face not pressed to the rooftop illuminated by the moon._

_"I don't know," Iruka whispered. His cheeks burned just to say the words, to admit that it happened, and even as he felt lighter for having told someone he wanted to push it back in and lock it away somewhere safe. "Maybe."_

_"You don't know his name. Or what he looks like. He could be anyone. He could… You said you fell into a weird trance_—_what if this Hound guy was just your brain playing tricks?"_

_It was entirely possible; probable, even. But Iruka curled his hand, the one that still burned with the heat from butter-soft leather gloves, against his chest and breathed in and out. "No. No, it was real. I know it was. But you can't ever say anything about it in front of anyone, ever. He could get in trouble. You have to promise."_

_"All right, all right. I promise, Iruka. You can count on me."_

_"Thanks, Genma." Iruka hadn't been able to stop the grateful smile that broke over his face like a sunrise, mirrored by the boy lying a few feet away. It was like a puzzle piece shifting into place, slotting home. A friend. Finally._

_"There's a dog that follows me sometimes. A silver one. I think it might be his."_

_"Yeah, sure."_

Exhaling, Iruka loosens his grip on Genma's flak jacket and then steps back to right his chair, plopping down with a tremulous smile. His heart pounds and pounds and pounds, fixing to break his ribs, and the whirlpool raging in his gut softens, dissipates. "Good to hear."

"Pfft," Genma snorts. "That answers _that_ question."

"Which question?"

"What your jounin specialty would be. Can we call it the Scary as Fuck Teacher Jutsu? Because you, teacher, are scary as fuck. Jeez. I didn't feel a drop of killing intent, but I'm pretty sure I was just about to meet my maker."

Lips pinched, Raidou wanders over, his flat gaze wandering up and down Genma with deliberate care. "What have I told you about antagonizing Iruka-san?"

Genma waves him off, rolling his shoulders a little and straightening his flak vest. "He loves it. I keep him constantly on his toes."

"You keep me constantly annoyed," Iruka laughs, nodding over the next kunoichi in line. "Don't you have somewhere else to be? Training grounds? The Hokage's office? The bottom of a ravine with both legs broken? I've got two hours left to this shift and there's no way I'm going to even make it through the next twenty minutes without doing something horrible to your person."

Genma sighs and pushes off the table with a dramatic flair that would make Gai weep with envy, as if every movement and muscle twitch pains him greatly. As if he hadn't just been attacked by a comrade. "God, you're boring—what happened to the little hellion that made Bunya Hachi's stuffed animals come to life and try to smother him in his sleep?"

"It was _your_ chakra we used to do it," Iruka points out, and the kunoichi stifles a laugh as she hands over her mission scroll.

"Yeah, but it was your idea." Genma grins. "And you were the one who figured out how to get past the house's wards."

Iruka shrugs. "If anything, I did them a favor. Their security was pretty lax for a well-off shinobi family."

"Iruka-san," Raidou says with a tinge of good humor. "How out of character."

"They didn't try to smother him, okay? They just walked across the room and crawled into bed with him. Anyway, he deserved it." He gives the kunoichi's scroll a cursory once-over. Everything seems to be in order. "I wasn't always a well-behaved paragon of virtue, you know."

"You're barely one now," Genma says, eying the kunoichi's backside as she leaves. Raidou elbows him in the side. "Ow. Quit it."

"Be respectful of your fellow ninja," Raidou intones.

"I'd respect the hell out of her." Genma watches her leave, then snaps and points at Iruka. "Oh, man, remember when you made it sound like they were singing that schoolyard song as they climbed into bed with him, and Bunya just fucking _lost_ it? Scared me shitless. A bunch of little girls were singing it the other day and I nearly swallowed my senbon."

"More's the pity you didn't," Iruka laughs. "Please, though, go literally anywhere else. I'm working."

"Yeah, yeah. Join us for a drink later? The festival's in full swing."

Even Raidou's dour expression lightens a little at that.

Iruka rolls his lips inward and smiles, shaking his head with an apology that he doesn't really feel. "I'm visiting my parents tonight."

"Ah." Genma doesn't say anything else about it, for which Iruka is irrationally grateful. "Whatever happened to that loser, anyway?"

If he tries hard enough, Iruka can still taste the candy he'd been sucking on when Tamaru-sensei came into class, stern and casting his ever-mistrusting glare over them, and announced that Bunya Hachi had dropped out of the academy with plans to become a sheep farmer. The candy had come in a little wrapper that looked like a strawberry. It tasted like victory.

"Just couldn't hack it, I guess," Iruka says with a wicked grin.

Genma snorts and saunters away, waving absently over his shoulder. "Catch you later, Iruka. Don't forget to place your bets before tomorrow."

"Yeah, I'm not going to do that," Iruka calls out.

Raidou trails after Genma like a very scary shadow, but his slow gait comes to a stop and he turns, fixes Iruka with a hard stare, and says, "I would work on keeping a better handle on your temper, Iruka-san."

Ice spindles up from his belly, wrapping cold fingers around each notch of his spine and stroking shivers up to his shoulders. He nods once. Raidou inclines his head and slips through the doorway.

He exhales, shoulders slumping with spent tension, and his hand lifts to rub a complaint into his chest. There's a splash of connection where his fingers meet the fabric of his vest, the promise of contact singing between them, and it—the cold, rocking murmur deep down—settles with a hum.

_Not yet_.

* * *

><p>By the time his shift ends and he makes it to the Memorial Stone, the moon has fixed its cold throne high, casting a sweet but dim glow upon a thousand souls who have come and gone. He finds them easily enough, relatively high up from the bottom where the latest engravings have found a home—too high for him to reach.<p>

_Umino Ikkaku_

_Umino Kohari_

Nestled amongst the others who fell the night the Nine-Tails was unleashed, his parents gaze down upon him, in pride or disappointment, or both—he really doesn't know. He's never asked, too afraid that they might actually reply. Too afraid that if they do, his questions will never stop. _Why did you keep me from helping you fight? Why couldn't I have died with you? Why can't I do things with chakra the way I should? What's wrong with me? What is the thing that whispers to me and smells like salt and tastes like rage?_

He places a hand on his chest and presses into the steady beat of his heart, and then slides it down to rest over his diaphragm. The muscle there is shaped like an umbrella—he remembers from his teaching courses in anatomy how it bowed around the abdominal organs, a mother bird encircling its young, and how it was anything but empty. But he feels hollow there. Except for the moments when that thing, that churning, covetous presence sloshes in from nowhere at all and fills him to bursting.

As if answering a call he never made, it pushes up to meet him. He rips his hand away, breathing out, and it settles again.

He looks up at the stone, eyes skimming _Umino Kohai_, and whispers, "Did you know?"

She never treated him as if there were anything about him to fear. There was no moment in which he caught her looking at him strangely, or furtively whispering to his father and stopping when he drew near. She used to tuck him under her arm like he was a bag of vegetables and pretend nothing was out of the ordinary about it as he kicked and squealed with laughter, and at night they would lie together in his bed that was too small to comfortably hold them and she would tell him about her first missions, her affinity for fire and how her sensei had to tailor every technique he knew to it, how she dreamt of opening another school with a contemporary curriculum. She used to cup both his cheeks and nuzzle her nose against his because he hated it, but he didn't really, and she wasn't stingy with her I-Love-Yous.

No. No, she couldn't have known. She would have told him, certainly, and loved him despite it. Maybe even in spite of it.

He lets his eyes drift to the name above hers and doesn't need to wonder.

There is no one he can ask about this, not without raising suspicion or dredging up the hatred that comes of having something large and unexplainable trapped inside an otherwise inconspicuous body. When they asked how he managed to survive a fuuma shuriken to the spine without sustaining heavy damage, he had no answers. He never should have been able to move again, let alone get to his feet to tie his hitai-ate around Naruto's head. Instead he lay on his stomach in his hospital bed, the sharp scent of salt in his nose, and tried to stem the roaring within him, the tempest of black and blue and green that demanded vengeance for such a betrayal. It was weeks before he could get through a single day feeling entirely like himself. Even Sandaime had seemed perturbed that Iruka could be up and walking around so soon, and he would concentrate more on Iruka than the shougi board between them during their little meetings.

_What happened out there, my boy?_

And Iruka had sat there, sweating, unnaturally still, with his eyes locked on the shougi board so he wouldn't have to look at the one person who never once doubted him in the eyes and lie, and repeated what he told Ibiki-sensei in his statement: _Naruto saved me._

If he brought it before the Hokage now, confessed to the storm inside him that raged that day in the forest, it would certainly mean his death. There is no way the Council, the Hokage's attachment to him notwithstanding, would allow _two_ unstable nin running around.

He sighs. Life was so much easier when he was simply contemplating jumping off a mountain.

Placing the bouquet he bought from Yamanaka Flowers at the foot of the stone, he brings his palms together in prayer. It's become almost routine, the gesture ringing a little hollow as he murmurs the words, but he really does hope his parents have found peace wherever they are.

"I love you both, and I'll see you soon," he says quietly, moves to take a step back, and—

And—

The stone stands, silent, solitary. As if of their own volition, his feet bring him a little closer.

Barely breathing, he reaches up and delicately presses reverent fingers to the notches in the stone, dragging over every chiseled stroke and glyph, names that belong to so many and now no one at all. He slowly walks his hand up and over, touching _Daichi_, stroking _Takahiro_, softly thumbing across _Masato_, and closes his eyes lest a gloved hand reach out and curl around his own.

Don't be any of these names, he pleads silently. Don't be on here.

He's being ridiculous, but the thought of one of these engravings belonging to Hound is the hot burn of a knife between his ribs, twisting until he gasps.

_Take care of those not-always-black eyes for me, normal Iruka._

The fingers of his other hand come up to brush carefully under his right eye.

Genma was right. Hanging around waiting for someone whose name and face he doesn't know is the worst kind of stupid; the willful kind. It's absolutely pathetic to be nine years after the fact with nothing to show for it but an unreliable, romanticized memory, especially when he has no proof that it even happened. What would Genma think if he knew that Iruka stopped taking lovers because their fingers didn't fit right with his, that their bodies were unfamiliar against his. That none of them have ever been completely satisfied with normal Iruka, not the way an unknown nin was almost a decade ago.

He scoffs at himself.

What would he even do, honestly, if Hound did come back? If Hound, for some insane reason, remembered the dumb kid he saved and wanted Iruka—normal Iruka, and all that entails. Would he bump into Iruka in the street one day and introduce himself, or would he appear like a spectre in the night, mask in place only to be slowly slipped off to reveal… to reveal something Iruka's never allowed himself to think about. Trying to imagine what lies behind white and red porcelain never fails to leave his gut heavy with something not unlike guilt.

A hopeless romantic lives underneath layers of practicality and the occasional flare of mischief. Even so, he can't help but be nine years after the fact and still hoping against all hope that his faceless, nameless nin is somewhere out there, safe and sound behind the mask.

He presses his forehead to the stone. It's shockingly cold and clears his mind of everything except a different kind of prayer. _Don't go where I can't follow._

Satisfied that he's made enough of a fool of himself for one night, Iruka backs away from the stone with one last look.

When he gets home, he'll wash the day away with a nice, hot bath before bed, and set his alarm for some obscenely early time—he'll pull Naruto out of bed before he has to be at the arena and Iruka at the Academy, treat him to a breakfast of champions.

He smiles and turns.

Swathed in shadow, a sleek, gray mutt stares back, all smart angles where it sits, ears perked and tail curled about its paws. The breeze blows a bit, shifting the cover of shadow around it, and it flickers before his eyes like a ghost.

"It's—" Iruka cuts himself off, because what the hell can he even say?

The dog tilts its head in a curious gesture, disappearing half into the darkness. It huffs, glittering eyes staring up at Iruka a bit brazenly than is probably normal for a dog its size. It's not nearly as large or dignified as the Inuzuka ninken, but it's still a rather handsome little thing, and has been for as long as Iruka's caught glimpses of it out of the corner of his eye.

He jerks up to stand, his legs locking and fingers curling into fists. There's blood pounding in his ears, or maybe it's the roar of something else.

"It's you. You're his, aren't you? You belong to him."

The sleek head inclines.

"He's okay?" Iruka blurts out. He's trembling so hard he may actually need to sit down before his legs buckle, yet he feels so light, like he might just simply float away, drift to sink into the moon. "If you're here, then he's—"

He stops. The thin tail unwinds from where it's curled about its front paws to thump against the ground, and its tongue lolls out, ears relaxed. It's a happy affirmation.

Hound could have come to Iruka in person, but he didn't. Perhaps he's far away. Perhaps he doesn't care enough to show himself and just wanted Iruka to stop looking for him in the Memorial Stone. Perhaps this isn't real at all. Whatever it is, it can be enough. He's waited nine years for _something_; he won't push for more just now.

"Good," Iruka murmurs. He rubs at the heat in his cheeks. "That's really good. Thank you, ninken-san. Can I, uh, interest you in a steak or something? There must be a few places still open..."

Its tail thumps again, approving, but it declines by joining the night air in a burst of white cloud, leaving Iruka alone with the ghosts of the village and the erratic pound of his own heartbeat.

Tilting his head back, he inhales the faint scent of the dispelled summons, ozone and parchment paper and some kind of pleasant intent, and grins, laughs a little. This is as good an omen for which he could ever ask. A sign of glad tidings to come.

The morrow looks brighter with every step he takes toward home.

He's almost sorry he didn't place a bet for the final round; it's sure to be spectacular.

* * *

><p><strong>Additional Notes:<strong>

Spectacular. Yeah, let's go with that.


	4. Hadal (Part 1)

_There is a monster that eats mountains and is wreathed in fur and flame, towering above the highest peaks, many-tailed and terrible, and he steps forward to extinguish it, turn its remains into silt from which new lives may grow to balance those taken. Except the monster is now a little boy with eyes that call to him, face marked in the black brushstrokes of his father's rash decisions, and is reviled. Except the boy is now loved, because he wills it._

_There is an unhappy man with an eye that does not belong to him who asks for something new—a fact lost to time or a true story that has never been told—and he pulls the man into his arms, lets him inside his body where he is deep and cold and endless, and whispers, "In the absence of the old ones, there is logic, but what you think is logic is simply the unwillingness to believe. You have progressed to a point where should you be faced with what the world has forgotten, you would go mad, as all you have come to know as fact, as logic, would crumble. Because of this, dark things sleep in dark corners and wait for the moment when logic loses its hold upon you. Then will they sleep no longer."_

_There is an unhappy murmur that ripples through fire, frost, and frond, and old voices once silenced grow loud, and louder still, until they are the only things to be heard. The clamor is beset by a tongue that melts and gives birth to hot and angry mountains, multiplied by three, and six eyes set their gaze upon five nations that had been given to the world as a gift, since squandered. Such an insult has never been, and there will be a punishment to fit the offense._

_There is a world that inhales to scream, as there is much pain and no balm with which to soothe it. But he moves across lands he has never seen and sweeps a hand out to share his knowledge—of storms that rage endlessly where none can see or hear them, of depths so deep and dark that the sun does not know of them—and he fills every crevice, every crack, until the world is awash with him._

_There is a woman with hair like a sky full of stars and eyes that belong to no one else, and she carries him close to her heart as she waltzes, one-two-three, one-two-three. Her voice rolls over him like a never ending song to which he doesn't know the words, and yet he knows it well, knows the feel of flesh melting into scales, of a body once claimed and discarded like old clothes. He dissolves in her arms, a fleeting fancy, and she erupts into endless blue, wearing her freedom as a cloak._

_She calls to him as a terrible, writhing vengeance bathes the world in red and gold and orange, her voice ringing out like a roar, like a battle cry, like the very thread of life knitted in bone, flesh, and thought._

_You are my continuation. I have given myself to you, so you must never turn your back on the—_

With a sharp inhale and a full-body jerk that feels more dramatic than it should be, Iruka wakes up and immediately wishes he hadn't.

Rolling onto his back, he shoves his fists into his eyes and rubs until green and purple spots dance behind his lids, capping it off with a groan loud enough that his neighbors will probably start banging on the walls. Or congratulate him for finally getting some.

He feels awful—too weighted for his skin, stretched so tight over his bones that one wrong move will rip the whole thing to shreds. The sheets are sweat-damp and coiled about his legs like idle serpents, and his muscles ache with the tension of a badly-strung wire, positively strumming with anticipation for something that has no name or reason. Even during the sleepless nights leading up to his own Chuunin Exam, he hadn't been so uneasy.

His fingers twitch against his stomach, the brush of dreams lingering between them like cigarette smoke, wanting nothing more than to grab hold of them, keep them somehow before they disappear. He untangles himself from his sheets and stumbles out of bed to the window, sliding it open with a grateful sigh.

There's a family of bush warblers that lives in the tree just outside, and the little bastards take a truly frightening amount of satisfaction in waking him up before his alarm every morning. As much as Iruka would like to pretend he's not the kind of person who would kill wildlife for being annoying, he's never been much of a pretender. Despite the deep-seated hatred that sparks whenever he hears _pi pi pi kekyo kekyo Hooo- hoke'kyo Hoohokekyo,_ his gut cramps in anticipation of it.

Because he's never outgrown the need to do something with his hands, his fingers tap a broken rhythm against his bare thigh. He rolls his shoulders. Shifts his weight onto his other leg. Runs a hand through his hair. Swallows reflexively and presses his forehead to the cool glass of the pane, exhaling, eyes drifting shut. His body will adjust soon enough, will stop moving so he can just be. Any moment now, and the warblers will fill the air with their shrill song.

A minute passes. Two.

He opens his eyes.

There's nothing—no morning breeze, no warbling. Just an oddly pregnant sky with thick, slate-colored clouds limned in red.

Iruka pushes away from the window pane and shivers, the sweat on his skin dissipating and leaving his skin uncomfortably tight.

So he stands there for a moment, breathing, allowing himself a moment of idleness where he would normally fill the silence with something—grading, or making a quick snack—anything to make him feel a little more real than he does whenever he's here for extended periods of time.

As a boy, he always thought that, one day, living alone wouldn't be so hard. Silences would be comfortable, because he would be comfortable with the person he'd become, and he would be grown enough to fill out the mattress and erase the extra room, and, in turn, the need for someone else to be there. He wouldn't wish so hard for the empty walls to crumble down around him—not when he would someday have filled them with artwork and his jounin certificate and pictures of all his friends. Thirteen-year old him would be so disappointed to learn that not much changed when he got older, except there's a teaching certificate on the wall... and he that doesn't feel guilty about eating ramen after midnight anymore.

Other than the nights when Tamaru-sensei and his wife come over, this place isn't a home, which is why it's so very easy for him to leave it every day at the ass-crack of dawn for the Academy, or the market, or stay at the mission desk until closing.

He blows out a breath and shifts again, glancing out of the corner of his eye to the clock on the wall. "Shit."

With quick, rote movements, he twists his hair into its usual tail, throws on a pair of pants and a relatively clean flak vest, and flies out the door.

Despite its prosperity over the last couple of decades, Konoha proper isn't all that big—it can be easily walked from one end to the other in an hour. The smart, concise design of the village makes it seem larger than it actually is, and coupled with its sprawling forest territory it seems endless. But Iruka moves easily through the streets, nodding in greeting at those already up and about; normally his route to work is congested with his students—former and current—vying for his attention, or parents hoping for a moment of his time to discuss their children, and he barely makes it to the Academy on time. This morning finds him on a different route, one softened by the oddness of the sky, and it isn't long before he turns a corner and finds himself at his destination.

He feels his mouth curl up into a sneer.

In the pantheon of things to hate, Naruto's apartment is up there.

The building itself is a thrown-together monstrosity that looks as though it's one rusty nail away from collapsing entirely, situated in one of the more run-down neighborhoods of Konoha and pushed between two other buildings like a tumor. Most of the windows, at least the ones with actual glass in them, have bars, and the ones that don't are patched over with plastic or nothing at all. There are two flower boxes hanging from one of the first floor apartment windows; Iruka would be more shocked to find actual flowers in them and not bags of drugs, which he's pretty sure the occupants manufacture out of their kitchen.

He tried tracking down the landlord once, but no one actually knows who owns the building; rent is given to the one-eyed ninneko that sits on the front stoop.

Some of Iruka's best daydreams involve burning the whole thing to the ground. It would probably be the kindest renovation it's ever had. He's seriously considered it. The jail time would be more than worth it.

As he turns to go up to the top floor, he damn near trips over someone in the stairwell. A man. No, not just a man—a shinobi, clutching a bottle of something that is probably illegal, the gauze bindings discolored and loose where they wrap around his calves. He looks blearily up as Iruka passes, and slurs, "How much?"

"You couldn't afford me," Iruka says. If his eyes roll any further back into his head, he'll see gray matter.

"I could've rocked your world, you stuck-up priss!" The man calls, and follows that witty rejoinder up with thick, raucous cackling.

Iruka's feet make not a sound as he whirls and throws his arm out, but the man at the bottom of the stairs screeches like his hair is on fire when the kunai buries itself into the concrete inches away from his crotch with a soft _thunk_.

"And I could've aimed better," Iruka says sweetly, turning to trot up the remaining steps. The stunned silence behind him more than makes up for the fact that he's down a kunai.

He's forced to dredge up an old and beloved skill to pick the lock on Naruto's door, because the little idiot won't put up any wards, but once Iruka depresses the last pin, he stops. Instead of turning the knob, he takes a few steps back to drink in the whirlpool symbol tacked onto the door. He once offered to buy Naruto an actual name plaque, something solid and permanent, but Naruto shrugged it off and said, "I already had a nice name thing but someone came by and crushed it. I don't care so much if something happens to the paper."

It took a little digging and money exchanged hands a few times, but Iruka ended up finding the guy who broke Naruto's nameplate and had a drink with him at some dive bar on the outskirts of town. He also ended up dragging the man's unconscious body to the bathroom and gluing exploding tags to his balls.

Iruka smiles to think of it and is still smiling when he kicks the door open as though he were a member of the T&I Unit on a bust, and his heart positively glows to see Naruto shriek "NOT THE TONKATSU!" and fall ass-over-teakettle out of bed.

"Glad to see those finely-honed shinobi skills are working out for you. Especially since you're going to be pitting them against the one of the best in your age group in a few hours."

"Owwww," groans the pile of boy and blankets on the floor. "Iruka-sensei?"

"No, I'm the Hokage. I've cleverly disguised myself as your stunningly handsome and perpetually overworked former Academy teacher in order to provide you with this personal wake-up call," Iruka says dryly.

Naruto glares up at him from his makeshift nest, lower lip stuck out in a pout. "You're not funny."

"Considering I'm taking you out for breakfast before your match, I'm the funniest damn person in this room." He tilts his head to get a better look at the shadows beneath Naruto's eyes, the imprint of the pillowcase on Naruto's cheeks, and frowns. "Naruto, did you sleep at _all_ last night?"

Spine arching, Naruto sits up with an almost feline grace, opens his mouth to answer, and then blinks at his open door.

"Iruka-sensei… did you _break in_? Did you _commit a crime_ just to come and wake me up?" A slow, awed smile slides across Naruto's face like a lit fuse, ignited by the prospect of his former teacher breaking and entering for the sole purpose of coming to see him.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about." Iruka allows his gaze to wander around for a moment, taking it all in. He somehow doubts his expression is as neutrally pleasant as he'd like it to be. "Were you practicing a wind jutsu in here? It looks like a bomb hit."

"Uh…" As if a fire had been lit under him, Naruto struggles out of the embrace of his blankets and stumbles around, all coltish legs and red cheeks, picking up empty ramen cups and haphazardly-thrown pairs of old underwear.

A lecture or a good stretch of shouting wouldn't be out of place—Naruto keeps glancing at him out of the corner of his eye and flinching, waiting for the axe to fall—and Iruka really ought to… but it isn't too hard to see himself in the mess. His own apartment wasn't any great shakes when he was Naruto's age—with piles of dirty laundry like hills that hadn't the wherewithal to be mountains, half-read books tossed about like stepping stones, and old takeout growing armies in the fridge. Visitors had been rare, and as such there wasn't a pressing need to clean constantly, easier to let everything pile up and deal with it when he needed to. It filled the emptiness a little.

The only truly clean spot in the apartment is the little table upon which a framed photograph stands. Against the backdrop of a peaceful forest is Team 7 in various poses—Uchiha Sasuke glowering off-camera, Naruto glowering at _him_, Haruno Sakura in between them both and trying to salvage the shot, and Hatake Kakashi as their benefactor and teacher, arms encompassing all three.

Iruka picks it up gingerly and studies the overwhelmed, yet happy expression on Kakashi's hidden face and concedes, deep down, that he might owe the man an apology for calling him incompetent in front of Sandaime. His temper has never been subtle, and it's known to rise unexpectedly with devastating results. It was unforgivable, what he said, and the next time he sees Hatake Kakashi he'll say so.

_"Putting them in a dangerous situation would be interesting. Ruining them would also be interesting."_

"Iruka-sensei, what are you doing?"

"Definitely not thinking about murdering anyone," Iruka lies and puts down the frame. "Want some help?"

Naruto pauses by the fridge, arms laden with old wrappers and a hideously orange pair of boxer shorts. "What, really? You're not mad?"

"I'm not your mother, Naruto; you're a couple of hours away from the final round of the Chuunin Exam. My days of telling you how to live are over."

The thing is, he never wants those days to end. There isn't anything he'd like more than to burn this godforsaken place to the ground, sweep Naruto over his shoulder, and bring him home. Give him a place that's clean and warm, with milk that hasn't expired, and conversation at the kotatsu, and the sense of family they both crave. Greet him in the mornings and send him off with nice clothes, a packed lunch, and the knowledge that someone will be waiting for him when he comes back. Sip hot tea while stargazing on the roof, and bid him goodnight the way no one ever did. Invite him over to dinner the nights that Tamaru-sensei and his wife are there, introduce him to the man who helped shape Iruka's own path. There is so much to make up for, and if he thought it would help somehow, he'd offer it in a heartbeat.

But his eyes light on the photo next to Naruto's bed, and he knows it's too late. Only one of them wants for a family now.

Sighing, he turns a pointed look at the moldy agemochi on the table and can't help but adding, "Although you might want to throw that out before it takes over."

"Nope!" Naruto beams, tossing a pile of dirty laundry under what are probably dirty sheets. "You're not my mother. I don't have to do jack."

He laughs. "For every smart-ass comment, I'm docking a dish at breakfast. You just lost yourself a plate of tamagoyaki."

"But that's my _favorite_!"

"I thought ramen was your favorite."

"Iruka-senseeeeei, tamagoyaki is my favorite for _breakfast_," Naruto wails, like he can't believe Iruka hasn't been paying attention all this time, and pulls off his sleeping cap to begin the hunt for clean pants. "You're so mean to me."

A grin steals over Iruka's face. "Former teacher's prerogative. Get your ass in gear; you can't be late."

"For breakfast?"

This is the boy who will someday be Hokage. "For your _match_."

As quickly as a winter sunset, Naruto's bright expression collapses, casting odd shadows across the swell of his cheeks. He makes an unsubtle turn, keeping his back to Iruka, and fiddles with nothing.

"Naruto?"

"I don't think I'm gonna win."

"What?" It's been a couple of weeks since one of his students accidentally hit him in the back of the head with the broad side of a kunai during throwing practice. He was pretty sure there had been no lasting damage, but apparently he was wrong.

"I don't think I'm gonna win," Naruto says again, muted. "I'm going up against Neji. He's a genius, y'know."

Iruka blinks. "So?"

"So, I'm _not_." Naruto locates a pair of blindingly orange pants and steps into each leg slowly, pulling them up with great reluctance. "He's got that weird eye thing, right? He'll see through all my techniques and beat the crap out of me without even breaking a sweat. He's been training non-stop."

"So have you," Iruka points out. It's a truth that deserves to be acknowledged; he's never seen Naruto work so hard or focus so readily on one goal. Whoever the Pervy Sage is, he made good on the promise he'd given Naruto at the start: to help him become stronger. "Naruto, I didn't see you for almost the entire month because you've been training so hard, and normally you hound me for ramen at least four times a _week_—"

"Neji tried to kill Hinata—she's his _cousin_! Do you think I'm going to be able to match a guy like that?"

He remembers Tamaru-sensei ducking into his classroom after hours, white-faced, whispering about how the Hyuuga heiress was felled during the preliminary round by her own blood. The words were rounded and hushed with shock, and Iruka probably should have felt more than a vague sense of resignation. He should have acted shocked, but he couldn't muster up the pretense. No matter how many times he revisits the ideas of honor and familial bonds during his lessons, they're not always going to stick—particularly not with those who need to know them most.

But Naruto has never met a challenge he couldn't browbeat into a new ideology; Hyuuga Neji won't be any different.

"He's gonna _cream_ me, Iruka-sensei, just like he did to Hinata. And my heart's gonna explode all over the place and everyone's gonna laugh. And then I'll be back in the Academy, and Sakura-chan will probably hit me..."

"Naruto…" Despite the familiarity of wild, golden hair and the way the boy is dressed like an intentional insult to the eyes, Iruka doesn't recognize the person in front of him.

The thing about Naruto is that he's never been happy or sad a day in his life—Naruto is ecstatic or enraged, deeply depressed or absolutely manic, starving or so full he could burst. Before stabbing Iruka in the back, Mizuki used to complain that Naruto felt too loudly, too much. He was absolutely right. Inside that boy prowls a beast that easily toppled mountains and villages; it's not too much of a stretch for Naruto to feel on a bigger scale. The seal that made a prison out of a boy isn't as strong as people seem to think, and the Nine-Tails slips through the bars more often than not, Iruka's sure. So, how would anyone expect Naruto to behave other than in extremes?

If anything, it's an honest way of living that Iruka can't help but desperately envy; he's certainly never allowed himself the luxury of feeling something to its full extent. Except once. Twice.

But even in his world of absolutes, Naruto has never once given up so easily.

Sighing, Iruka walks over and wraps his arm around thin shoulders, curving Naruto toward him and stopping just shy of contact to try and keep some semblance of propriety, and then he thinks, _fuck it_, dragging Naruto in the rest of the way. Hesitantly, Naruto's arms curl around him in return.

There's a rumble of connection, a slow rocking thing that drifts to the surface, bubbles up in Iruka's chest, a tether swaying up from the depths to tangle them together, reaching out for the light Naruto seems to shine all the time. Iruka finds himself dragged down into it, submerged. _I know this one_, it whispers, pleased, all warmth and recognition. _A flame split into nine tiers that burned the world during a failed audition._

Iruka ignores it and holds on a little tighter. "What's this really about, Naruto?"

Nearly a minute passes in complete, weighted silence, and Iruka is about to step away when he feels the dig of fingers in his back.

"What if he's right?"

"Who?" 'He' could be anyone, ranging from Uchiha Sasuke, who always seems to bring out the worst in Naruto, to the mysterious Pervy Sage, to Hatake Kakashi, who—if he's somehow responsible for this—will be nothing but a conversation topic for people to wonder about over lunch. _Whatever happened to the famed Copy-Nin? He disappeared without a trace the day of the Chuunin Exam final round. Even the ANBU are still baffled._

"Neji." Kakashi gets to live another day. "He said you can't escape destiny. He said—He said that I was always going to be… Iruka-sensei, I don't want to just be the kid with a monster inside him forever, but what if that _is_ my destiny? What if that's all I am?"

There are words he ought to be saying right about now, platitudes and assurances, but he can't get them out through the clench of his teeth, and he has to close his eyes against the rage that rears up—a towering, writhing wall of blues and greens and blacks that itches to swallow the entire world whole. It fills him, rushes through his arteries to soak his insides and rides back through his veins to his heart, around, around, over, through, and he revels in it, is lit up with it, pushes it somewhere to gather so he might get his hands around it, wield it the way those who no longer believe would fear—

"Ow. _Ow_, Iruka-sensei, leggo, you're—too tight!"

Startled, Iruka huffs out a breath and opens his eyes. His fingers slowly relax where they grip Naruto's shoulder and nape, and he exhales slowly, the anger ebbing.

"Jeez, Iruka-sensei, what's the big ide—" Naruto begins, rolling his shoulders and attempting to shove back.

Iruka shakes his head and takes the reins of himself in a tight grip. "Naruto."

As if struck, Naruto goes still, and Iruka takes the opportunity to step back a bit, hands staying upon shoulders already weighed down with an entire village's cruel comments and expectations.

"Listen to your old sensei for a second, all right? No one's destiny is set in stone—nothing is ever guaranteed, not in anything. Except for death. Is it possible that you could fail the exam and wind up back at the Academy? Yes, of course. There's no sense in lying about that. But do I think it'll happen? No."

A terrible hope fills Naruto's eyes. "You don't?"

"Naruto, do you remember the day I first took you out for ramen?"

"Yeah, you made me clean the Monument," Naruto grumbles, and he'll no doubt cling to that particular grudge for years and years.

"You wrote _fuck the Hokage_ across the faces _of_ the Hokages," Iruka says flatly. "Yes, I made you clean the Monument."

"Everyone knows that _you_ did the same thing when you were my age!"

"And I cleaned it up then, too. Can I continue?"

"Iruka-senseeeei!" Naruto grins a little, scratching at the back of his neck. "Wait, what you were talking about?"

Iruka rolls his eyes. "The first time we went out for ramen. Do you remember what you told me?"

If Iruka listens very carefully, he can hear the wheels turning beneath all that blond hair. After a moment, Naruto hazards, "... That pork ramen is my favorite...?"

"No, you dope. You told me you were going to become Hokage someday—the greatest the village has ever seen—and that everyone would recognize you for it."

A bright grin washes over the shadows on Naruto's face, and the black slashes across his cheeks deepen. "Oh, right! I meant it, too. I _am_ gonna be Hokage someday—the best one! My face is gonna be up on that mountain and if some kid writes all over it? I'm gonna _let him_."

Iruka smiles. "Well, you're still a ways off from being Hokage, but you've never once failed to make people notice you. I know it's hard, but you've got to ignore the doubters, and your team, and your own insecurities, and do what you do best."

"What's that?"

"Be you," he says. "You are, after all, Konoha's number one surprising ninja, aren't you? Today, you're going to remind them of it."

Iruka spent years ignoring the pain of one little boy who only wanted to be seen, and he'll never be fully absolved of that guilt, but the way Naruto looks up at him now—eyes wide and glossing over, catching the light to show a glimpse of something so much bigger than them both—makes him feel just a little bit lighter.

Without warning, a sudden orange and blond onslaught sends Iruka staggering back, and Naruto buries his face into Iruka's chest, clutching him with what ought to be a terrifying strength. Smiling and a little short of breath, he cups the back of Naruto's head tenderly, shielding him from the world for a moment, the way his own father used to when the nights were terrifying and something whispered to him from somewhere deep and dark.

"Thanks, Iruka-sensei," Naruto whispers, and Iruka ignores the way his voice cracks on his name.

"I want you to promise me something, Naruto," Iruka says quietly, nudging him a little to lift his head and hold his gaze. Hard to believe there was a time he could barely even look in his direction. "Are you listening?"

"Yeah," Naruto says, attentive and earnest, as still as he's ever been.

"I want you to promise me you're going to go out there and kick the shit out of Hyuuga Neji."

It takes a little while for Naruto's shrieking laughter to subside and for the hearing to come back in Iruka's left ear, but in the end they even pinky swear on it.

* * *

><p>"Oh man, that was so good!"<p>

Iruka tries to reply, but his gorge rises and he claps a hand over his mouth to stop it from going any further. He'll let his students see a lot of things, up to and including death, but their teacher puking up like an amateur isn't one of them. He never should have let Naruto talk him into ordering one of everything. For him, breakfast is usually a small bowl of miso, rice, and maybe some natto, but Naruto called him a wimp and, waving some salted fish around, shouted, "I BET I CAN EAT TWENTY MORE OF THESE THAN YOU!" And Iruka very well couldn't insult the restaurant owner by sending back plates with food still on them.

"Thanks again for breakfast, Iruka-sensei!" Naruto pats his flat belly with a grin. "It was just enough!"

"Let me die," Iruka mumbles, swallowing thickly.

Naruto laughs, swinging his arms wide, and his cheeks are flushed pink with good food and company. "I told you not to have that last bowl of okayu."

"You said you'd make ten shadow clones and break into the kitchen if I didn't. I wasn't going to take any chances." There is no universe in which Naruto wouldn't make good on that threat.

"You're so _easy_."

Iruka sighs. "Put that next to my name on the Memorial Stone."

Cackling like a loon, Naruto trots ahead, fingers linked behind his head as though he hasn't a care in the world. Long gone and hard to find is the doubt and melancholy from earlier; this familiar Naruto walks with an easy confidence, utterly unstoppable.

Relief sings through him to see it, and Iruka smiles. And then closes his mouth tightly against a loaded belch.

He's never eating okayu again.

The streets are much more congested than they were when he walked them earlier, the odd sky having given way beneath the sun to light the day with something powerful and bright. Iruka barely manages to slip by and between the crowds of civilians and shinobi, breakfast making him a little clumsy.

"Who _are_ all these people?" Naruto gazes around the street with wide, suspicious eyes, flitting from hitai-ate to tee-shirt to tee-shirt to hitai-ate, and attempting to decipher the symbols on them. "Did they really all come to watch the match?"

Iruka looks up.

The stadium bows to the sky like a tribute to a forgotten god, old but well-kept, with a new paint job to entice the uninitiated, and no doubt already filling up with those who want to watch their friends and compatriots move on to a new chapter in their lives... and civilians who just want the best seats. Iruka has never been comfortable with the Chuunin Exam as a spectator sport—it's not something to enjoy; it's something to endure. Civilians see it as entertainment instead of a rite of passage; none of them have any idea what the contestants have gone through to get there, what horrors and depravities they've seen and done, just so they might have the chance to protect those same people—the clueless, the outsiders, the _ungrateful_.

It's a game to them, a fantasy, easily put away once the excitement wears off and it's time to go home. If a single one of them knows what the slice of a kunai feels like, how poison forced into one's mouth by a traitor can be sweet like candy, how someone with whom you've played, learned, grown up can reach into your mind and pull out all the things you fear and all the things you didn't know to fear, he'd be very surprised.

_The sand of an unfamiliar shore mixes with the dirt that feeds the leaf._

Iruka ignores that.

"Ah!" Naruto stops and rears up on his toes, and Iruka slows to a stop next to him. "I think I just saw Kiba go in. It's not fair that he got to use Akamaru during the prelims when _I_ couldn't bring anything in."

"The Inuzuka Clan's ninken are considered tools, Naruto. You know that."

Kicking a rock, Naruto shrugs. "I guess. But Akamaru's awesome—he's not just a tool. He has feelings and stuff. And just because you usually see animals with certain clans doesn't mean other people can't train them and use them..."

"I'm sure Kiba would be really glad to hear you think that about Akamaru," Iruka says warmly. Then he squints. "Wait, is this about you not being able to bring snakes to class—"

"I could've trained them!" Naruto bends back and shakes his fist. "I could've had a _snake army_. If that weird bug guy—"

"Shino."

"If _Shinoooo_," Naruto draws out the name with an eye roll, "gets to use his creepy bugs, then I don't see what a few snakes could've hurt."

There is no way on God's green earth he would've ever let Naruto through the door with snakes and he opens his mouth to say so, but stops, stymied, caught on the sight of a graceful hand reaching up to playfully slap a high, regal forehead.

They're two points of color against a backdrop of shifting gray, the only things worth note in the entire village, possibly the world. The man, tall and almost too-sleekly built, bobs away from another attempt at his face, and the woman says something with a rakish grin that makes him smirk and sling a pale arm over her shoulder. Her hair—an odd rust color that catches the light in such a way that Iruka sees spots dance before his eyes, and for a moment her hair flashes blue, green, then white, before settling again—brushes her companion's arm, drawing attention to the subtle shift of muscle beneath his skin.

Iruka doesn't recognize them—not their faces, or the colors they wear, or the odd symbols etched in their hitai-ate—but he knows them, the way he knows the sound of waves sprawling over the shore. He knows the sound of their feet upon the sand as they run ahead of him, their legs longer, their bodies taller, older and still reaching out for him—_"Come on, buddy, you can run faster than that! Last one there's a lame gull!"_ He knows the feel of their arms around him as they swing him up and into endless, shimmering blue, the splash of them beside him, the speed of them, the power they hold, and how every morning and night they come to him and whisper their thanks for him.

He knows them because he knows they love him. He knows them, despite not knowing them at all.

_They are yours, as I was hers, and they were hers, as I am yours._

He wants to call out to them, shout across the way, part the people whose faces and lives blur together and tell them… tell them…

Tell them what?

The woman says something, flicks her hand back and forth as if waving off a concern, smoke, something too trivial to be borne, and the man lowers his chin in agreement. His hair is a single strip of gray-blue flame down the center of his otherwise bald head. Together, they turn and walk toward the stadium, disappearing into the gray of the crowd, and Iruka presses his hand against his chest, where even through the flak vest he can feel the wild, unrestrained pounding of his heart.

"... sei… Iruka-sen_sei_!"

Something smacks him in the back of the head and he startles, whirling around to find Naruto giving him an odd look.

_Not yet._

"I've been calling your name forever, Iruka-sensei. Something wrong? Are you gonna puke?" A gleeful glint enters Naruto's bright, blue eyes.

"I—" He rises a little on his toes to try and catch a glimpse of rust and white, but there's nothing except the hustle of the crowd. He's not crushingly disappointed. He's not. "I'm fine. Sorry."

"Your eyes went all weird for a second," Naruto says, obviously unconvinced. "Is it the okayu? Are you allergic? I wouldn't have made you eat it if I knew you'd die."

"I'm not—" Iruka rolls his eyes and points in the direction of the stadium. "Are you ready?"

Naruto's gaze trails the length of Iruka's arm and comes to a stop on the stadium, and his pupils shrink a bit in awe and possibly a little fright. But he squares his shoulders, puffs out his chest, and shoves a thumbs-up into Iruka's face.

"Yep! I made you a promise, Iruka-sensei, and I'm not gonna go back on it! I just wish you could see it happen."

It's possible he should feel guilty for making a former student swear to beat the stuffing out of another former student, but all he feels is annoyance that he won't get to see it happen. "I tried to get the day off, but it's all hands on deck at the Academy. I'll be there for your formal ceremony when you make it to chuunin, though."

Naruto's eyes shine. "You really think I'm gonna beat Neji, don't you?"

"I really do. And _when_ you beat him, try not to lord it over him too much."

"I won't." Liar.

Iruka barely restrains himself from rolling his eyes, but he can't stop the smile that breaks through. He holds his fist out. "Go remind them who you are."

Grinning wide enough that Iruka's own cheeks ache in sympathy, Naruto bumps his fist and then slams into his side, sketching a quick hug before taking off in the direction of the stadium. "Iruka-sensei, I won't let you down!"

He's still smiling about it half-way to the Academy, languid and warm from breakfast, from pride in a boy who has never once let him down when it's counted, and he lets the feeling carry him the rest of the way, buoyed by a comfortable breeze that rouses the trees and whispers against the back of his neck.

Naruto will win—of this he has no doubt. Neji may have the technical proficiency expected of him as a member of the Hyuuga clan, but he doesn't have the creativity or drive that Naruto has always (rightfully) boasted. Shinobi aren't just measured by their skill, but by their quick thinking, stamina, and their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. If, for some reason, Naruto loses against Neji, it will be the fault of bias and nothing more.

And because his mind has never seen a worst case scenario it didn't like, he immediately sees the Hokage and the council members smile blankly and say, "Better luck next time," while Naruto stands before them and silently falls apart.

Swallowing down a growl, he whirls around and kicks a rock into the woods. He smirks, feeling better already, and waits to hear it land against another stone or maybe a pond—something that will make a lot of noise.

There's no twang against stone or a splash. There's nothing.

Well.

Without taking his eyes off the trees, he lets his hand drift down to rest on his hip, unlatching the pouch there with deft, silent movements and sliding his fingers inside to curl around the hilt of a kunai.

"I never understood the thing about stalking," Iruka says loudly. "I know some shinobi like the challenge and the chase, but me? I'm a simple guy. I prefer the direct approach."

Before that has a chance to sink in, he lets not one but six kunai fly into the woods. To make up for his lack of chakra, he's spent years honing his aim. It's never failed him.

But his kunai make no contact that he can detect; they whisper their way through the foliage and seemingly disappear. He exhales, rolling his shoulders to push out the tension there, the anticipation of a fight thrumming beneath his skin, and cocks his head, listening. He widens his stance, straightens his spine until it locks, and reaches into his side pouch again. His fingers find the familiar scrape of a tag and easily wrap one around the edge of a kunai, the pad of his thumb splitting beneath the kiss of the blade to activate the inscription, "_Baku_."

_An old feud is recalled with every burst of flame. Be wary of how you wield his weapon._

There's a rustle in the woods, something too big and focused to be an animal or the wind, and it moves with concentrated grace, then stops. Whoever it is watches him, its stare palpable, indefinite chakra sliding up his spine with the care a lover might take to curl about his throat.

The breeze kicks up a little, parting the green and brown of the surrounding wood, and for a second he sees—

Iruka breathes out, the calm beat of his heart playing a different tempo—percussion born of hope.

White and red ceramic. Silver hair. He'd seen, just for a moment—

"Hound," he breathes and releases the kunai, deactivates the exploding tag. "Is it—Is that you?"

The greenery moves a bit, allowing him a glimpse of the mask, and he draws in a shaking breath, dropping his hand to his side, easily seen. Disarming. The fingers of his right hand curl into his palm, the phantom brush of a gloved hand dragging a shiver from beneath his shoulder blade.

Finally.

"You changed masks," Iruka says, huffing a tremulous laugh. "Do I call you 'Cat' now? I don't know that I can, not when you've always been… to me, you'll always be… _God_, I'll call you whatever you want; it's just so good to see you."

Hound says nothing.

Iruka scratches his arm, searching for a sudden itch he can't find. "I saw your ninken last night, and I'd hoped… I don't know what I hoped."

The white and red cat mask tilts beneath the cover of a dark hood, like a dog hearing an interesting sound for the first time. Iruka can't imagine what Hound must see—a not particularly noteworthy man, barely a shinobi anymore, anchored to the town by dozens of little hands and red pen. Hardly the boy ready to jump from a mountain.

"Is it pathetic to have waited all this time to see you again?" Iruka asks quietly.

The body beneath the dark cloak shifts, silent, and something rumbles deep within Iruka, a dark dread making itself known in his gut. As the moments tick by and no reply comes, realization dawns. Hound hadn't faltered once in his words to Iruka years ago. He, whoever he was, had issues with silence.

This isn't the reunion he's been hoping for. The person behind that mask is not who he thinks it is at all. The vast, angry thing inside him builds and builds, its rage like a shifting wall of blue and black, for this is a deception against which he has no defense.

"... You've intruded on a personal moment, ANBU-san. I'd appreciate it if you left me to it."

That ought to be the end of it—ANBU has no business in personal matters, and it certainly isn't in their job description to sit here and watch Iruka make a fool out of himself—but the eyes of the cat bore into his for a beat longer, the shoulders beneath a dark cloak tense, as if the ANBU is about to move closer, and Iruka shivers in anticipation.

Another minute passes in silence, and because Iruka is a little stupid and a lot brave, he reactivates the _baku_ tag.

Exhaling, shoulders squared, Iruka takes a step toward the trees with his finger threaded through the kunai's grip, when the faint pound of footsteps on the dirt road beats into existence.

"Sensei!"

He turns his head for a second, and down the way a bit Konohamaru waves both arms, a toothy grin stretched from cheek to cheek as he runs.

"You—" Iruka turns back to the trees, but the white and red of the cat mask, the crouching form beneath the cloak, is gone.

Heart pounding and breathing hard, Iruka stares at the tangle of green and brown, such an unlikely place to meet again, and... can't stop the hysterical laugh that bubbles out of him. He ducks his head, cheeks hot, pressing an unsteady hand over his heart to calm it, and takes a few breaths to steady himself. He's such an idiot.

"Sensei, do you know what time it is?" Konohamaru is one big, sly smile, and Iruka wants to strangle him with his scarf. "You're gonna be la~ate! Tamaru-sensei felt you coming and wanted _me_ to tell _you_ that you'll have to clap erasers like you did when you were my age if you're late!"

Just what he needs today: Tamaru-sensei undermining him in front of the kids.

Sparing the woods one long, last look, Iruka sighs and opens his mouth to give the most diplomatic "you're practically a fetus and you don't know shit about shit, so shut your trap" of his career when—

"GET DOWN!" Iruka shouts, slinging an arm around Konohamaru's waist and slamming the boy back against his chest, then dropping back to the ground to avoid the deadly blur of kunai hurtled their way. He rolls them over, gets a hand firmly on the ground, and launches them off the ground and away as another seven or eight kunai embed in the dirt where his neck had been.

He keeps a tight hold on Konohamaru, who breathes shallowly, high-pitched and terrified, trembling in the cage of his arms. Iruka exhales and becomes a shield, his old training surfacing—_"Rule Number 1 of Teaching: Your students are not just your students, but the future of Konoha. Protect them with your life."_—with the familiarity of an old friend as he turns his body into a defensive stance, presenting a strong front to the sharp sights of whoever lurks under the cover of the wood. After a thought, he places his hand over Konohamaru's mouth.

"Keep very quiet," Iruka whispers. "Can you do that for me?"

"Mmph _mpph_," Konohamaru gasps against his palm, struggling a little against his hold. He must realize the futility of it and gives up, slumping with a whimper.

Who knows how many have surrounded them, how many wear the ANBU disguise—it's certainly more than the one in the cat mask. If Iruka weren't so damn useless, he'd be able to pinpoint their chakra and make a better judgment call than the one he's going to have to make, and soon.

"Pretty quick reflexes for a _chuunin teacher_," someone calls. The words drip with sarcasm, each one spattering against Iruka's face with the unerring accuracy of an open-handed slap.

Iruka smirks grimly and holds Konohamaru a little tighter. "Why, thank you. Are you here for the Exam? Because I think you might be a bit lost. The stadium's back that way." He jerks his head in the direction from which he came.

It wins him a chuckle. "Chakra-dead and funny. It's my lucky day."

"I aim to please," Iruka says.

"Well, you certainly don't aim to kill," the nin says, audibly amused.

Iruka's grin is born of an adrenaline rush. "Why don't you come out and we'll talk about it? I feel a little dumb having this conversation with a tree."

"I'm pretty comfortable where I am, sensei, but I appreciate the offer."

"Not a problem," Iruka says pleasantly. "May I ask why you're attacking me and a little boy without provocation?"

The nin laughs a little. "_And_ polite. You must have to beat 'em off with a stick. All right, let me cut to the chase here, sensei: we're taking the boy."

Konohamaru goes very still.

"Oh yeah?" Iruka tightens his arm a little, enough for Konohamaru to know that Iruka isn't giving him up for anything. "I'm sorry, my friend, but I wouldn't be a very good teacher if I let him go off with a stranger. I'm sure you understand."

"I'll make this easy, no fuss or muss: you hand over Sandaime's grand-brat and we'll let you go. Won't even head over to your pretty little school around the corner, there. See, some of my buddies here were itching for a visit. They enjoy the smell of paint, the first attempts at tags hanging in the windows… and they _really_ enjoy the way those little legs part for a cock like they're made for it."

At this, there's a chorus of raucous laughter all around them.

Konohamaru shrieks in pain at the sudden bite of Iruka's fingers in the skin of his cheek, and Iruka has to force his hand to unclench. He sees red, then blue, then black, feels the responsibility for a hundred lives take up residence in his mouth like rows of thick, pointed teeth. The mysterious spokesperson, whoever he is, would have a hard time saying such unforgivable things with his throat ripped out.

_Take me up as your shield and sword and turn the waters red with his insolence._

The sudden flare of pain and the taste of blood in his mouth, the charge of lightning before the strike, startles him out of the rage, and he licks at the bite mark in the flesh of the inside of his cheek to anchor him.

"I hear Konoha's youth are exceptionally accommodating," the nin carols, and Iruka grits his teeth against another onslaught of anger. "I saw one of them this morning. A regular poindexter, all big round glasses and a tight, little mouth. I bet he wouldn't put up much of a fight at all."

"Mmmphmff rmmph!" Konohamaru thrashes against Iruka's hold with enough anger that he entertains the thought of letting the boy go so he can avenge Udon's honor.

"Stop it," Iruka hisses, jerking Konohamaru once.

A distraction. He needs a distraction, something that will capture their attackers' attention just long enough for him and Konohamaru to run the last quarter mile to the school where back-up will be waiting. Where the hell is the actual ANBU woodland patrol?

"So, what's it gonna be, sensei? The boy, or the boy and all the other pretty flowers of Konoha plucked and fucked? Because let me tell you, sensei: when my boys are done with them? They'll rip their pretty heads from their necks while I make you watch. What d'ya think, boys? Sound like a plan to you?"

The trees echo with the enthusiastic cries of soon to be dead men.

_Let me into your arms, your legs, your mantle, and your and my and our hands will be the waves that crush them._

"Not yet," Iruka murmurs, but he lets it rush into his core, spilling through his veins toward his heart to be sent into every part of him; a closed circuit—the cold, refreshing flow of something he can't name—it's not power, it's not not power, but it's all his. It rumbles, pleased, and even allows itself to be pushed down again once he's had his fill. "Not yet."

He's never had the kind of chakra he ought, but he has enough to use for a quick getaway. Smoke and mirrors, traps and tags—those are his weapons, the tried and true foundation of his own shinobi way.

"Well, sensei?"

"I'll have to think about it," Iruka says, and throws four smoke bombs to the ground at his feet. The second he's under cover, he uses his free hand to make the seals—_kemuri bunshin!_—and spin a quick clone out of the smoke. The moment it's fully realized and runs toward the trees as if fixing to attack, he launches himself and Konohamaru as far away as he can, as close to the school as one leap will take them, shoves his hand into his pouch, finds the activated kunai from before, and lets it fly.

There's a pause, the world inhaling, and then one by one the trees shiver as balls of brilliant red and orange engulf them whole. The old trunks bloat obscenely, then burst, and the woods disappear into a cloud of ash and fire. It's utterly devastating, and ultimately not enough.

He makes it one more leap before he feels his clone disperse.

"SENSEI!" Konohamaru screams into his palm, and Iruka barely manages to dodge the fist that flies at his face.

"You killed two of my men!" The nin—Sand, if the symbol on his hitai-ate is to be believed—growls.

"Oh no," Iruka says flatly, jumping back to avoid another blow. "Two pedophiles shuffled off this mortal coil. I'm so sad."

"Just for that, I'm going to _fuck_ the little Sarutobi brat until he _splits_ in two. I'm not usually about kids, but for you, sensei? I'll make an exception. I don't care what Orochimaru-sama wants!"

Orochimaru.

And suddenly he gets it. This isn't a group of missing nin looking to cause mayhem by capturing the Hokage's grandchild. This is an invasion, a systematic breaking of Konoha—to take Konohamaru is to bring their leader low, weaken his resolve. Iruka doesn't know most of the story behind Orochimaru's betrayal, but he's gotten the gist of it over the years, enough to know the Exam is going to be sabotaged. Every single soul in that stadium is in danger.

Naruto—!

With a snarl, Iruka throws Konohamaru as far from him as he can and immediately goes after the sand nin, executing a damn near perfect roundhouse kick to the man's head. It doesn't connect, which isn't surprising, but he doesn't let that stop him from grabbing another kunai and slicing outward, once, twice, up, sideways, each attempt more vicious than the last. His form is perfect, honed over years spent trying to keep up with his peers as chakra made their techniques strong, and while it's not nearly enough to land a blow, it's got his opponent on the defensive. He'll keep at it until he can't, until he bleeds, until he falls—he'll do whatever he must to keep this man away from Konohamaru and the Academy.

The sand nin is faster, his form ideal, and he lands a punch, a kick, a slice, forcing Iruka back, making him clumsy with pain and surprise. His demise comes on swift feet, a living blur of beige, and Iruka howls at the kunai that jams past the collar of his jacket and into the bone. He can feel the point of the blade scrape against it, severing something important, and god, it hurts. If it didn't white his mind out every time he so much as breathes, he'd congratulate the sand nin on finding and exploiting such a vulnerable spot.

Ripping the blade out hurts more than it did going in, and the sand nin cackles a little bit at Iruka's strangled scream.

"I'm running out of places to hit you, sensei," the sand nin says and slams his fist right into Iruka's collarbone.

The air in his lungs punches out of him and he staggers back, suddenly very cold. Shock. His body is going into shock, shutting down to regroup—Iruka forces himself past it to stick his hand into his pouch, but the sand nin grabs his wrist and jerks it until he hears and feels the wet snap of bone. A cry punches its way past Iruka's teeth, and he stumbles a little.

"Pretty quick reflexes for a _c__huunin_ teacher," the sand nin says again, grinning, and snags the kunai from Iruka's other hand, drawing it back for a killing blow. "But not quick enough."

"Still enough to get by," Iruka gasps and lunges forward, slapping his hand over the nin's eyes and activating his last tag—his last resort. A homemade tweak.

_Chishi bakufuu!_

The man's head bursts like a dropped melon, and it's the same colorful show as the trees from before. Blood and brain matter spatter against Iruka's cheeks, but his face is so hot from the fight that it feels like water, a nothing that smells of burnt flesh and failure, and he trips backwards a little in his haste to get away from the slump of the body.

His collarbone and wrist remind him that he's now down one fully-working arm. The pain radiates upward and curls into his elbow with a velvety-hot purr. He sucks in a breath and chokes a bit on the gathering of saliva in his mouth, nausea crackling along his jaw, and he spits it onto the ground. His visions swims.

Poison, he realizes weakly. The kunai had been tipped with poison.

Deep inside, something rages.

"S-Sensei," Konohamaru whispers, and his voice trembles the way it ought not, not yet, not while he has years left in the Academy before he will know the taste of real fear. "What—"

They can't stay here, not for another minute, another second. There will be more of this, and Iruka won't be able to withstand another fight or another ten minutes. Getting Konohamaru out of here and to the school is now more than imperative; it's everything.

"I happened to like that clone," comes a voice from behind them. Iruka turns to see the sand nin, hitai-ate slung over his shoulder and tied beneath his arm like a token given to him by an admirer, and is nearly bowled over by the killing intent coming from the man.

Panting, Iruka glances over at Konohamaru, who's rooted to the ground with fear and that same damned resolution Iruka's seen in Naruto time and again. The brat is going to do something foolhardy any second. He's going to get himself killed—

_Fortify your body with the armor she crafted herself from nothing. Take me up and end this._

The sand nin's hands flash through a series of seals, too fast for Iruka to parse, but before the final gesture can be made a gray blur leaps through the air and knocks the man to the ground. Growls, yips, and screams intermingle as a familiar canine head shoots forward to take a vulnerable throat in its jaws.

He turns and scoops Konohamaru up again, running toward the Academy as fast as his burning, cramping legs will go. The ninken will buy them a little bit of time.

The Academy's training grounds come into view, cresting the hill, all well-kept greens and browns, and Iruka wants to weep when he sees the ambling, frail bodies of his students as they run laps around the track. They should be inside working on their goddamn weapons essays, safe behind the walls where they know emergency safety drills and how to hide. Who the hell let them out?

Seated upon one of the benches that lines the track, Tamaru-sensei lifts a hand and smiles.

"Sensei, you're late!" A girl calls, and the others all stop running to join in.

Something akin to horror drifts over Tamaru-sensei's face as he takes in the scene. "Iruka-sensei—"

"GET INSIDE!" Iruka's legs find a last kernel of energy and he pushes himself harder, faster, flailing his useless arm wildly. "GET BACK INSIDE NOW!"

A horrible, high-pitched yelp fills the air, the sound of defeat, but he can't look back. He can't he can't he can't. It would be a second's worth of willful suicide, and to do so would dishonor the ninken's sacrifice. _Hound, you saved me again. _Wrapped tightly around him, Konohamaru cries out.

Iruka skids over the dirt of the track and fumbles with the boy in his hold, nearly dropping Konohamaru altogether. As if summoned, Moegi and Udon rush to Iruka's side and clamp onto his hips, weighing him down. He's going to fall. "We're under attack! Everybody get inside now!"

"D-Do we line up?" A boy—Mato Aota, his mind supplies vaguely—asks, eyes wide and filling with tears.

"RUN!" Iruka shouts, and bites back a wave of nausea, clapping a hand over his collarbone. His fingers slip in the blood, a veritable tide. His mind is swimming, his tongue thick with dizziness, and whatever that kunai had been tipped with paints a terrifying black swirl across the stretch of his vision. "GET TO THE TUNNELS! F-FIND YOUR SAFETY BUDDY AND WAIT FOR INSTRUCTIONS!"

"You heard Iruka-sensei! Run to the tunnels as fast as you—" Tamaru-sensei makes to step forward, but he's too old, too slow to stop the kunoichi that comes at him from behind and jams her kunai into the soft skin of his throat. He gurgles as blood spurts from the site like a dam break. Students scream in horror. One boy stumbles back and falls to the ground.

The air becomes rank with fear and urine, and Iruka sucks in a shuddering breath as the sand nin jerks her kunai out of Tamaru-sensei's throat and pushes his body down like he's nothing.

He'd been in his own classroom not five minutes, trembling in excitement and fear and with the crazy thought that maybe he finally found his place in the world, when the door slid open and a familiar face beset by time poked in. Tamaru-sensei wasn't as frightening as he was when Iruka was ten—there were too many laugh lines and wrinkles to fear—but he still had that grave air about him as he came in and shook Iruka's hand. _"I always knew you'd find your path. I just wish that path hadn't been paved with thumbtacks. Umino Iruka-sensei… well, things are going to get very interesting, don't you think?"_

They would go out for drinks at the end of the day and swap horror stories and lesson plans, and once a month Iruka would open the door to his empty apartment and find a bottle of good sake and company on the other side; Tamaru-sensei and his wife Naoko would make themselves at home while dinner finished cooking, and wouldn't leave until dawn began to crest over the trees. It tickled Tamaru-sensei to no end that Naruto, the bane of the Academy, became Iruka's greatest triumph, and he always said that someday all of them—Iruka, Tamaru-sensei, Naoko-san, and Naruto—would be seated at the kotatsu, warm from a meal and good humor, and feel like a family.

A family.

Iruka drops to a knee, felled hard by the sludge in his veins, and can't look away.

"Ir...ka…" The light in those milky eyes, the same one that sparked whenever Iruka successfully made a clone for a moment, held a henge, made it through the day without fucking up, asked him and his wife back the next week over the holidays, fades slowly away until there's nothing to show a kind, fair soul had ever taken residence there.

Wakahisa Tamaru-sensei dies at the feet of the smirking nin who killed him like a coward, in front of the children he taught to respect everyone—including their enemies. In front of Iruka, who wanted a family and had one all along.

_Let me in. Give voice to your birthright. Grant me permission._

"Tamaru-sensei," Moegi sobs, and Iruka can't even find the words to comfort her.

There's a displacement of air, a sinister hiss as sand gathers and rears around them, forming into soldiers all bearing the insignia of Sunagakure. The kunoichi who killed Tamaru-sensei grins at Iruka and licks the blood off the edge of the kunai.

He's going to kill her.

He's going to kill them all.

_Grant me permission!_

"You don't look so hot," she sneers, and steps aside to let the sand nin—the one from the woods—step forward. His uniform is ripped in several places, spattered with blood and dirt, and his pleasantly handsome face is contorted into something monstrous.

"I told you, sensei," the sand nin murmurs, breathless. "Either hand over the Sarutobi heir or I make you watch."

At the jerk of the sand nin's head, another of the soldiers moves with unfathomable speed, snatching up little Mato Aota, who shrieks in terror. A gloved hand sinks into Aota's hair, grips hard, and pulls the boy's head clean from his shoulders, the bone twisting and snapping free, trailing dura mater and nerves like the tails on a hanging token.

Iruka stares, rooted to the spot, and no matter how hard he tries to goad his limbs into moving, to reach out, to find a rock or grab hold of the dirt and do something, he can't. The poison has made him a prisoner in his own rigid body, and inside, he screams loud enough to drown out everything but the anger, the vastness, the power.

Inside, deep, deep, deep, deeper still, in the blackness where the sun has no power, something shifts.

"Aota-kun," Konohamaru whispers, clutching at his jacket.

_Now._

"That's two," the sand nin says with a snicker, and the other nin tosses Aota's body to the ground like so much trash. One of the kids retches. "Where's your line, sensei? You think I won't find it? I'll have my soldiers paint this place red with their innocence, every single one, unless you give me the boy."

There is a woman whose voice rolls over him like a never ending song to which he doesn't know the words—

"Is he even listening? I think he's ignoring you, taichou. Or he's just about dead," the kunoichi sneers.

—and yet he knows it well, knows the feel of flesh melting into scales, of a body once claimed and discarded like old clothes—

The skin of his arms shivers as something washes down like water, beginning with one good link and multiplying, rippling over him to cover his shoulders, his chest, the vulnerable place where his throat meets his jaw, and up still over his cheek. He tilts his head back and shudders into its strong, weightless embrace.

_What say you, clever child?_

The dark, insidious killer in his veins is easily washed away, and he slowly gets to his feet as if he were born to do nothing else. Beneath the soles of his sandals is an unsteady, mistrustful earth, but he knows what it used to be—stone and stone and stone, eons before it was crushed to silt and soil and expelled from his shores. It shall be again, and he breathes out slowly, feels it rush from him in great sluices, pooling at his feet and spreading fast—

"S-Sensei!" Udon cries, releasing him, his shoes wet.

—and he fills every crevice, every crack, until the world is awash with him, them, and together they rise and rise. He's unstoppable, unfathomable, and in him lies the world's first secrets, the deepest depths, and he closes his eyes and tilts his chin up to wake them.

"I'll give you one more chance, sensei, to hand over the boy. What's it gonna be? Yes or no?"

_Yes or no?_

Fact and logic crumble at his feet, and dark things rouse from dark corners and invade his flesh, his bones, his very marrow.

_You are my continuation. I have given myself to you, so you must never turn your back on the—_

"Yes."

* * *

><p>Filled with a hollow sense of betrayal, Konohamaru lets go of Iruka-sensei and steps back, soaked in Iruka-sensei's blood, in something wet and cold, and coughs around a sob that sticks in his throat.<p>

Yes. He said _yes_. Iruka-sensei wasn't supposed to give him up so easily, or even at all. He just sat there and watched as Aota-kun died. Teachers are supposed to fight for their students, even if it means they might die. Asuma said so, and Asuma would never lie—not about something like that.

Grandpa is going to be so upset. And Naruto-niichan…

"I told you I'd find your line, sensei," the ninja says with a scary grin, and takes a step forward.

A large hand reaches out and grabs Konohamaru's scarf, which is dirty from the fight before, and Konohamaru lifts his hands to push against it, struggling as best as he can—kicking and scratching, the way Asuma showed him. _Always fight, even if it won't do anything. _He will. He won't ever give in. He hopes someone's still alive to tell Naruto-niichan that he was a true shinobi right up until the very end.

"I knew you'd say yes."

Moegi screams, and the sand nin lifts his other hand to hit her, but something wraps around his wrist and stops it. It looks like a shiny rope, but it's not solid, not really. It shifts and flows like a river, blue and green and brown and black, and it splashes a little against Konohamaru's lips. It's salty. It's _water_—!

The sand nin glances up and Konohamaru does too.

It hurts to look for too long, his eyes burning as if were staring into the sun. It's nothing like anything he's ever imagined; it's too big, too _much_, even though it looks like just a regular guy. But it can't be. Not with undone black hair bleeding into a shimmery, billowy thing that looks like a waterfall suspended in time. Not with scales on its face and body, shining like armor out of the stories grandpa used to tell him before bed. Not with the scar that weird gold color.

Not with those scary, swirling blue eyes.

_"Who ever said,"_ the thing with Iruka-sensei's face says to the sand nin, _"I was talking to you?"  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Notes:<strong>

This was the chapter that wouldn't fucking end. I expect part 2 to be 580 million words and two films jfc.

Some might find the attack on Iruka on his way to the Academy jarring, or sudden—that was my intent. The invasion of Konoha was supposed to come out of nowhere, without any warning (for those who weren't looking for such signs—unlike, say, Kakashi). If you thought it should have come with recognizable signs, you've probably never been 100% surprised by anything.

Once again, this is completely unbeta'd, so any and all mistakes are my own. Feel free to find me on tumblr ( rcmclachlan) and yell at me about it.


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